The Thanksgiving moviegoing stretch began last night, and nobody has even sat down for dinner yet. Warner Bros’ Harry Potter spinoff Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them grossed $8.75 million from Thursday showings starting at 6 PM. All in after two days abroad in 47 territories, Fantastic Beasts is flying to $32.25M worldwide at this point in time.
Fantastic Beasts’ figure is just under the $8.8M that The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug generated on its Thursday night from midnight shows before posting a $31.19M Friday and $73.6M three-day opening weekend in 2013. Fantastic Beasts’ Thursday night is also shy of the $9.4M that Doctor Strange posted on its Thursday night earlier this month before collecting a $32.6M opening day and $85M weekend.
As we’ve said all along, Fantastic Beasts is a spinoff and it’s not based on a bestselling book series like Potter, so it’s apt to be lighter in weight gross-wise when compared to the junior wizard’s grosses. Instead, Warner Bros is banking on generations of Potter film fans showing up at the multiplex this weekend.
Heading into the weekend, tracking had Fantastic Beasts at a $70M-$80M opening with Fandango reporting that advance ticket sales as of Wednesday were besting those of Doctor Strange prior to its opening.
The final two Harry Potters, Deathly Hallows: Part 1 & 2 were previewed during a time when exhibitors largely held midnight shows (a practice that’s no longer the norm in the wake of the The Dark Knight Rises 2012 shooting in Aurora, CO). Deathly Hallows Part 2 minted the best preview night for the franchise with $43.5M followed by Deathly Hallows Part 1 with $24M and Half Blood Prince at $22.2M. However, one can’t really compare the preview monies of these titles to Fantastic Beasts as that Potter cash was earned at a time when the franchise was ending, so the want-to-see was quite high.
STX’s The Edge Of Seventeen and Open Road’s Vinny Paz biopic Bleed for This also held previews. We’ll have more on those later.
