‘Fantastic Beasts’ Casts a Spell: $218 Million Worldwide

Newt attended Hogwarts, but over half a century before Harry Potter was even born, and wrote a textbook – Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

Redmayne makes for a fantastic Scamander, a soft-spoken, reluctant hero more comfortable with beasts than humans. Directed by David Yates and produced by J.K. Rowling, the movie takes the audience to 1920s NY where we follow Newt Scamander’s adventures, an eccentric British magizoologist with a suitcase full of magical creatures most of which we haven’t encountered in either the previous Harry Potter books or movies. It’s set decades before the Potter stories and features an entirely new cast of characters.

Potter fandom has only grown more ravenous since then. Which is frustrating. Cynical as I am (and we all should be) about the idea of a tetralogy-launching spinoff of a movie series based on the most popular children’s books ever that, it’s actually not the worst idea.

Be careful not to assign too much importance to the foreign total. The first and original plan for theFantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them was to finish the series with three installments but J.K. Rowling thought that the story feels like five movies. “Family audiences really seem to be enjoying that”. In the end, we have an interesting weekend, as between Fantastic Beasts’ dominance and last weekend’s Veterans Day-aided weekend – holdovers got crushed this time around.

According to Time this latest J.K Rowling masterpiece has just hit the theaters this Friday and has been such a blockbuster since. Trolls and Arrival both moved down a place as well, slipping to third with $17.5 million and fourth with $11.8 million, respectively.

Several critics found the plot and its multiple characters overstuffed, with The Wrap’s Jason Solomons writing that “Despite immaculate design and splashes of wonder, a touch of magic is missing in this “Harry Potter” prequel”. Fantastic Beats is the fifth-highest foreign opening across all nine movies. But no matter whether or not you’re waiting on the release of the movie on streaming service, please know this: you should go see it in theaters while you can.