Warner Bros’ ‘Fantastic Beasts’ tops box office

It confirms Warner Bros.’ high hopes for the property and its decision to back five installments in the fantasy series. From a script by Rowling, the fantasy-adventure stars Eddie Redmayne as Newt Scamander, a collector of magical creatures who travels to 1920s NY, where several of his creatures get out.

Benedict Cumberbatch’s Marvel movie slips to two, having hauled in $181.5 million (£147 million) at the US box office since its release at the beginning of the month (Nov16).

Redmayne plays the part of the animal-loving Newt Scamander, who visits New York’s secret community of witches and wizards.

Just like the Harry Potter books and movies that were rich in themes of good and evil, death and family, author J.K. Rowling infuses the “Fantastic Beasts” story with darker topics of xenophobia and intolerance. While $75 million is notably less than the first Harry Potter movie, it’s still a great feat. The film, which cost an estimated $330 million to make and market worldwide, collected an additional $143.3 million in partial release overseas.

Though you might thing this is the first time Harry Potter fans have encountered the Obscurus, it turns out that we might have heard about this before, though not in any of the Harry Potter movies.

“Fantastic Beasts” scored an “A” CinemaScore from opening day audiences, and it received a 76 percent of recommendation rate from critics on RottenTomotoes. “Fantastic Beasts” had the worst debut from the wizarding world – including all eight “Harry Potter” films.

The film easily ended the two-week dominance of “Doctor Strange”, which fell to second place with $17.8 million. Trolls came in third with $17.5 and brought its total domestic gross to $116 million.