$44½m domestic opening; Update $43m

https://deadline.com/2022/04/box-office-fantastic-beasts-3-1235002928/

Over what is typically a lucrative Easter box office weekend, there’s unfortunately no great rush stateside to Warner Bros.’ Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore which is heading toward an estimated $44.5M opening. Warners is seeing at least $40M with the potential for upside. That’s 27% off the $62.1M opening of the 2018 second movie The Crimes of Grindelwald, which already had an opening that was 17% off from the first 2016 installment. Yes, threequelitis, as expected has set in, but know that this Harry Potter spinoff franchise was always light in the canon. Fantastic Beasts was never tied to a long series of J.K. Rowling books which had a ferocious following; in sum it’s no surprise to see this type of opening; not to mention the threequel was conceived during pre-pandemic times. The greater play for the movie is abroad, and its global take is expected to reach $175M tomorrow.

Imax and PLF are driving close to 40% of all ticket sales to date for the weekend, with the West and the Southeast delivering. Dumbledore‘s Friday was $20M (that’s 1.5M moviegoers per EntTelligence), including $6M previews, which is 21% off of Grindelwald‘s opening day, EntTelligence reports that 26% of Dumbledore‘s audience came before 5PM, 44% came during the 5PM to 8PM dayparts, and 30% of patrons showed up after 8PM.