Fantastic Beasts tops box office... but makes the least of the Potter movies

‘Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them’ may well have topped the box office around the world, but it’s not all good news.

The J.K. Rowling-penned movie – the first in a series of five – has made the least money of any of the ‘Harry Potter’ movies.

It made a solid $75 million (around £60 million) over its opening weekend in the US.

But that compares to $90.3 million (£73 million) made by the first Potter movie, ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ back in 2001 – a considerably larger $122 million accounting for inflation.

Despite falling short of the Potter-sized haul, it’s still done excellent business.

Added to the $75 million from the US, is a further $143 million from foreign territories – including $18 million from the UK – making a total of $218.3 million (£176.7 million) in all.

It’s a box office career-high debut for its star Eddie Redmayne, and also for Colin Farrell, veteran actor Jon Voight and Ezra Miller.

But if it wants to gain Potter-esque box office glory, it has a way to go to achieve it – ‘The Philosopher’s Stone’ ended up making $974.8 million, well over $1 billion after inflation.

The origin story of Redmayne’s ‘magizoologist’ Newt Scamander from the Potter universe – set in 1920s New York – has scored decent, if not unanimously positive, reviews from the critics.

It holds a respectable 76% ‘fresh’ rating from reviews aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes.

Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian gifted it five stars, calling it ‘a rich, baroque, intricately detailed entertainment’ and a ‘terrifically good-natured, unpretentious and irresistibly buoyant film’, while John DeFore of The Hollywood Reporter added that the film is ‘likely to draw in just about everyone who followed the Potter series and to please most of them’.

It’s out now across the UK.

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