‘Fantastic Beasts 3’ Doesn’t Enchant Box Office With Franchise-Low $40 Million Opening
thewrap.comWhile industry estimates have the film potentially stretching to $44 million, which would equal what Sony’s “Uncharted” opened to in February, “Fantastic Beasts 3” had double the reported production budget at around $200 million.
More importantly, the estimated opening is substantially down from the $62 million opening of “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald’ in 2018, which itself was down from the $74 million launch of the first “Fantastic Beasts” in 2016.
Reception for “The Secrets of Dumbledore” is somewhat better than for “Crimes of Grindelwald” with Rotten Tomatoes scores of 49% critics and 84% audience — compared to 36%/54% for “Grindelwald” — while matching the predecessor’s B+ grade on CinemaScore and earning 4/5 on Comscore/Screen Engine’s PostTrak.
But with a trio of well-reviewed films coming next weekend, led by Universal/DreamWorks’ “The Bad Guys,” and a new Marvel movie coming in May, the box office outlook is bleak for the Wizarding World.In second on the charts is Paramount’s “Sonic the Hedgehog 2,” which is dropping 63% from its $72 million opening for an estimated second weekend total of $26.5 million.
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