“Fantastic Beasts” tops box office with $75 million

PanARMENIAN.Net - The new champion is here. "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" opens strong at North American box office with an estimated $75 million in its debut weekend, forcing two-week champion "Doctor Strange" to hand over the throne. Therefore, the Benedict Cumberbatch-led movie falls to the second place with additional $17.7 million, AceShowbiz said.

Senior media analyst of comScore Paul Dergarabedian says, "It's a tale of the battling wizards," referring to Eddie Redmayne's Newt Scamander and Cumberbatch's Sorcerer Supreme. "In the post-election period, maybe just the super-fantastic worlds are the ones that people want to escape to."

Though "Fantastic Beasts" opening can't surpass the original movies in J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" film franchise at box office, it still ranks as one of the year's 10 best debuts. According to Dergarabedian, it's a great start for "Fantastic Beasts", saying that the movie's domestic numbers, along with its international haul of $143.3 million, "shows the tremendous goodwill built on the back of the 'Harry Potter' brand."

Rounding out the top five are "Trolls", "Arrival" and "Almost Christmas", which drop one slot to the third, fourth and fifth respectively. The animated flick featuring the voices of Justin Timberlake and Anna Kendrick earns approximately $17.5 million, while the Amy Adams-led sci-fi-thriller is estimated to bag $11.8 million. As for the comedy movie, it collects an additional $7 million for Universal.

Meanwhile, newcomers like "The Edge of Seventeen" and "Bleed for This" fail to take decent spots. The Woody Harrelson and Hailee Steinfeld-starring comedy flick lands in the seventh place with an estimated $4.9 million, while Miles Teller's sports drama debuts in the eighth place with approximately $2.4 million. Additionally, Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal-led thriller "Nocturnal Animals" tanks, opening in the eighteenth place with an estimated $494.000.