Weekend Box Office: 'Beasts' Best Everyone Else
by EG
The Harry Potter prequel Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them had a strong, if unsurprising, weekend and cruised to first place at the box office. The weekend overall, though, was not strong, and no other movies lured big audiences to theaters.
Fantastic Beasts took in $75 million in ticket sales, which was exactly in line with industry predictions. It's not a bad opening, but it's well short of the $82 million that Doctor Strange earned in its opening two weeks ago. The film has received good critics' reviews and audience reaction, but it remains to be seen whether it's successfully established a new franchise that will justify the four sequels that are already in the planning stages.
It's notable that less than one in five of moviegoers who went to see Fantastic Beasts over the weekend was under the age of 18. That seems to indicate that youngster enthusiasm for the franchise is muted.
Second place for the week went to Doctor Strange, which pulled in $17.7 million. That was just barely enough to edge out Trolls, which earned $17.5 million. Fourth place went to Arrival, with $11.8 million.
The week's other two new movies, The Edge of Seventeen and Bleed for This, both of which failed to bring in more than $5 million, bombed. Bleed for This, in fact, earned just $2.4 million.