'Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald' secures the UK's second biggest opening box office of the year

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald may not have scored many points with critics but it has still managed to take a tidy sum at the box office.

JK Rowling’s sequel to Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them has secured the UK’s second-biggest opening weekend box office of the year.

The film – starring Jude Law as Dumbledore and Johnny Depp as Grindelwald – debuted at the top of the chart with £12.32m knocking The Grinch down to No. 2 in the process.

Fantastic Beasts 2 comes behind Avengers: Infinity War as the Marvel earned £21.1m during its opening weekend or £29.4m if you include previews too.

Though this figure is certainly impressive, Warner Bros. may be disappointed that in the grand wizarding world of things, it’s not as good as past releases.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them took £15.3m when it opened two years ago while the last Harry Potter film, The Deathly Hallows Part Two, earned £23.8m in its debut weekend.

There are three more movies to come in this franchise so the studio will be hoping interest doesn’t wane as it did for the Divergent or Maze Runner series.

Fantastic Beasts 2 has just a 40% approval rating from 239 reviews on reviews aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes but its audience score is 69%.

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is in cinemas now

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