The box office receipts for the US premiere of the “Downton Abbey” movie answered the question first posed by Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham (Maggie Smith), in the show’s first season: “What is a weekend?”

Well, it looks to be about $61 million.

The film adaptation of the award-winning PBS series earned $31 million in the Colonies, easily beating “Ad Astra,” the Pitt vehicle ($19.2 million), and the new “Rambo: Last Blood” movie ($19 million). So much for muscle.

Audiences embraced the British aristocracy with a fervor not seen since the last installment of “The Crown” and are likely quoting Smith’s zingers, such as “I don’t apologize, I explain.”

The TV show is a hard act to follow. Writer Julian Fellowes and director Michael Engler had to pull out the stops for the two-hour feature film. Hugh Bonneville, who plays Robert Crawley, Earl of Grantham, says the movie was fashioned “with an eye toward our loyal audience.”

Engler says the movie needed a single event that could “pull everyone in and raise the stakes for them all.” That event became the arrival of British King George V and Queen Mary (Simon Jones and Geraldine James) at Downton. “Everything that has to happen around a royal visit gave us [story] opportunities,” Engler says.

“Downton Abbey” also had an equally impressive weekend overseas, raking in another $30 million. That’s a lot of crumpets for the folks at Carnival Films, which produced the film for approximately $13 million.