‘Fantastic Beasts 2’ earns weekend-winning $62 million

“Fantastic Beasts: The
Crimes of Grindelwald.”
Warner
Bros.

• “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald,” won the
  weekend box office with $62.2 million, but that’s lower than the
  opening for 2016’s “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.”
• It’s also the lowest opening weekend ever for a “Harry
  Potter” film.
• If the first “Fantastic Beasts” is any indication, the sequel
  will find most of its box office coin at the foreign box office.
• Meanwhile, other new releases “Instant Family” and “Widows”
  fell flat.

With the incredible success of the “Harry
Potter” movie franchise in the early 2000s, Warner Bros. was
certainly going to give us a spin-off franchise, but so far the
“Fantastic Beasts” films aren’t taking in the money that the
“Potter” titles did.

“Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald” opened on over
4,000 screens over the weekend and took in an estimated $62.2
million. It’s the smallest domestic opening for any of the “Harry
Potter” titles, beating out the previous lowest earner, 2016’s
“Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,” which brought in
$74.4 million in its opening.

The lowest domestic opening for any of the original “Harry
Potter” releases was 2007’s “Harry Potter and the Order of the
Phoenix,” which had a $77.1 million opening.
Counting inflation, that would be a $102.4 million opening today.

But like many franchises these days, Warner Bros. is probably
looking more towards the international take than at home. The
foreign gross for 2016’s “Fantastic Beasts” took in 71% of the
movie’s $814 million worldwide gross. And so far with “Crimes of
Grindelwald,” that trend is continuing. The movie already has
over $253.2 million worldwide total, thanks to its $191 million
international take to date.

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Meanwhile, the other new releases of the weekend had soft
openings.

Paramount’s “Instant Family,” starring Mark Wahlberg, looks to
not be the top choice for family options at the multiplex, as the
$48 million-budgeted family comedy only took in $14 million.

And Fox’s $42 million-crime caper “Widows” — with the top-flight
cast of Viola Davis, Liam Neeson, and Colin Farrell — also had
trouble finding an audience with only a $12.3 million take.