Fantastic Beasts 3 Leaped to #1 Streaming Movie When It Premiered

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore bounced back from a disappointing theatrical run with a strong opening on streaming. The latest installment in the Wizarding World franchise was such a bust that Warner Bros. Discovery is mulling the possibility of a reboot, but there is still enough goodwill toward Harry Potter — or just general curiosity about big tentpole movies — to make it a hit in its first week streaming, according to numbers now available from Nielsen. How big of a hit, and whether that’s enough to redeem it in the eyes of WB’s new management, is not clear.

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore had more than 750 million minutes streamed after its release on Tuesday of last week. The #2 movie, The Amazing Spider-Man, clocked in at around 475 million. Other movies in the top 10 on streaming ratings included Top Gun, Encanto, and Chip ‘n’ Dale Rescue Rangers. Fantastic Beasts was the only major new-this-week release on the list, so it will be interesting to see where it stands next week when it’s not “new.” 

The Secrets of Dumbledore opened at just $43 million at the box office earlier this year. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them had a $74 million opening weekend in 2015, and 2018’s Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald took in a $62 million opening weekend. To make things worse, the box office had a precipitous 67% drop from its first to second weekend.

The movie has the deck stacked against it; in addition to diminishing box office returns between installments, and harsh reviews of the second movie, the Harry Potter franchise as a whole has been struggling with creator J.K. Rowling’s steady stream of Twitter controversies. Johnny Depp parted ways with the franchise after a British court ruled against him in a defamation case, which is tangentially related to the U.S. case that just wrapped up this week and is set to be appealed.

David Yates (Harry Potter, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them) directs from a screenplay by J.K. Rowling & Steve Kloves, based upon a screenplay by Rowling. 

Starring Eddie Redmayne, Jude Law, Ezra Miller, Dan Fogler, Alison Sudol, William Nadylam, Callum Turner, Jessica Williams, Victoria Yeates, Poppy Corby-Tuech, Fiona Glascott, Katherine Waterston, Maria Fernanda Cândido, Richard Coyle, Oliver Masucci, Valerie Pachner, and Mads Mikkelsen, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore is now streaming on HBO Max.