An outdoor cinema in Adelaide has cancelled a planned screening of Fifty Shades of Grey after complaints from the Australian Christian Lobby.

But a screening organised for this Thursday will go ahead, as organisers said it was too late to cancel.

Australian Christian Lobby was concerned the film about a sadomasochistic relationship may be seen by children who are outside the cinema.

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Matt Watson from Openair in Glenelg said complaints about the film, which is rated MA15, were only aired through the media on Tuesday, which did not leave enough time to change this week’s event.

“We were actually quite surprised to hear about it this morning,” Mr Watson said.

“No one’s actually approached us directly or Holdfast Bay [Council] with any complaints and now that it’s two days out from the screening, it’s a little late, unfortunately.”

Australian Christian Lobby managing director Lyle Shelton told the Advertiser the movie tended to “glorify” sexual violence as being acceptable.

“The message of the film is bad enough, let alone the potential for children or young people to walk past and be exposed to sexual violence against women,” he said.

Mr Watson said the start time had been moved back and the second screening has been replaced with a more appropriate movie.

“We’ve moved the start time a little later and we have also taken off the second screening … and replaced that with a Grease sing-along which is one of our more popular events,” Mr Watson said.

A number of movies rated MA15 have been shown at the cinema already this year, without complaints.

Mr Watson said the cinema did not show R-rated films, and tried to have a variety of movies in the program.

“We try to have quite a diverse program, we have family-friendly nights and films MA15,” he said.

“We do go with the film classification board’s rating first before we do our program.”

Mr Watson assumed the screening of Fifty Shades of Grey had attracted attention because of the books’ reputation.

“The film itself has been rated MA15 by the film classification board, it’s one of the most popular films of the year so far, topping box offices, and that’s why we wanted to put it on our program,” he said.

“Lots of people are keen to see it, and our session is getting close to sold out, so it is very popular and we’re quite happy to show it really.”

Mr Watson recognised concerns children may hear or see parts of the film from outside the confines of the cinema, but said it was built to avoid that issue, including the use of 2m high fencing and additional fencing panels to block views.