With the success of J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" series, the pressure is on to the team behind the new film "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them". Given the opening day sales of $8.8 million, and getting the second lowest opening sales in a J.K. Rowling film, a lot of critics doubt its victory.
Fortunately, based on the report of Variety, the "Harry Potter" spin-off was able to reach the $75 million mark in its opening weekend. The movie dominated the box office charts in Canada and US. Indeed, "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" still has its magic after all. Not only that, the movie grossed an additional $143.3 million sales internationally where it was being shown and even exceeded the analysts' projections of $125 million. It was not shown yet in two of the major markets: China and Japan.
The #FantasticBeasts screenplay: https://t.co/Cmv6ZyurOT pic.twitter.com/I0diqQe2ty
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) November 18, 2016
"Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" is a pre-sequel of "Harry Potter" series, however, instead of Hogwarts, it unfolds in 1920's New York setting and introduces totally new casts of mythical creatures and wizards. The movie is distributed by Warner Bros. Picture and directed by David Yates who have already directed for "Harry Potter" films. The new casts include Eddie Redmayne as the lead character Scamander, Katherine, Waterson, Alison Sudol, Dan Fogler, Samantha Morton, Ezra Miller, Carmen Ejogo, Jon Voight and Collin Farrel in supporting roles.
According to Los Angeles Times, the movie's audiences are mostly female (55%) and those younger than 35 (55%) which also gave an "A" cinema score. It also has a 76% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Moreover, "Fantastic Beasts" is the third highest grossing IMAX opening of a J.K. Rowling series.
Warner Bros. believes that "Fantastic Beasts" will serve as a remedy to some of the audiences affected by the recently held presidential elections given that this year's battle between Trump and Clinton is one of the worst in recent history.
