Taking the No. 1 spot this week is "Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald" — the second installment in a five-part Harry Potter spin-off series. "Fantastic Beasts 2" brought in an estimated $62 million in its first week out.
While that's an acceptable opening for most films, it does fall significantly behind the original. "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" premiered with $74 million domestic dollars. Even if you include all eight Harry Potter movies, this is still the worst opening the wizarding world has had for a feature film.
But fear not my fellow muggles, young hot Dumbledore isn't going anywhere and neither is this franchise.
While American moviegoers are seemingly growing tired of Hogwarts-inspired tales, the foreign box office is running to the theater in droves. "Fantastic Beasts 2" brought in more than $190 million over the weekend. That's actually a better overseas debut than the original.
And while Fantastic Beasts was a fairly expensive film to make, the production budget came to nearly $200 million, Warner Bros. has already made it's money back. The worldwide box office take after this weekend is just over a quarter-billion dollars ($253M).
And that amazing box office run is despite the film apparently not being all that good.
"Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald" has a series low of 40% on the tomatometerand this is the first time a film from the wizarding world has been certified rotten by the movie review aggregator.
Falling to No. 2 this week is "The Grinch" bringing in an estimated $38 million in its second weekend. That pushes the worldwide total past $150 million.
And spending its third week in the top 3 is "Bohemian Rhapsody" bringing in an estimated 15.7 million in its third weekend out.
Even after being in theaters for nearly a month the Freddie Mercury biopic continues to overperform overseas. "Bohemian Rhapsody" made $45.5 million at the foreign box office this weekend and has $384 million in worldwide ticket sales as of this weekend.
As for next week, Let's get ready to rumble!
