“Fantastic Beasts, the secrets of Dumbledore” had a lukewarm debut in theaters in the United States

“Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore”the third installment in the “Harry Potter” spin-off saga, made a regular US debut by grossing $43 million in its opening weekend, a record low for the franchise.

Since the adventures based on JK Rowling’s books debuted in theaters in 2001, not one of the “Harry Potter” films or its spin-off saga had fallen below the $60 million threshold at their U.S. release, the main film market.

The performance of the film was far from the more than 74 million raised by the first film in the saga, “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them”, in 2016, and the 62 million of the sequel, “The Crimes of Grindelwald”, in 2018.

For this reason, magazines such as Variety pointed to a possible erosion of the brand, at least in the North American country, since in the international market the film added 150 million dollars, with strong numbers in Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom.

The production of this title, for which Warner Bros. spent 200 million dollars, has been involved in a controversy since the studio decided to replace Johnny Depp with Mads Mikkelsen, given the bad publicity of the former due to his legal conflict with his ex-partner. Amber Heard for accusations of mistreatment.

The controversies unleashed on social networks by certain messages from JK Rowling on issues such as feminism or transgender women have not contributed either.

For its part, “Sonic the Hedgehog 2″ was the second choice of the public by earning 30 million dollars in its second week, and after registering the best premiere for a film adaptation of a video game in history the previous weekend. of the USA, with 72 million dollars.

“The Lost City” ranked third with 6.5 million, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” fourth with 6.1 million; and the debut of “Father Stu” had to settle for the fifth position and 5.7 million dollars at the box office.