Based on the early returns-just a 49 percent rating from Rotten Tomatoes and a series-low $43 million in domestic box office returns from opening weekend-that go-ahead might never come.
To that final point, a Variety report last week revealed that inside Warner Bros., “there’s a growing sense the prequel series is no longer worth” the production headaches, and that the studio will wait to see how The Secrets of Dumbledore performs before giving the go-ahead to more Beasts movies. But the Beasts prequel series is now more than halfway over, and it still lacks any sort of forward momentum or propulsive reason to continue.Īfter this latest offering, it’s clear the series is at war with itself, on many fronts: the second and third movies over where the plot should go the “Fantastic Beasts” half and the “Crimes of Grindelwald/Secrets of Dumbledore” half over what kind of tone and characters should take center stage and the creator, studio, and fandom over whether it’s even worth trying to press on. That might seem an overly harsh assessment of a movie that eclipses its predecessor in quality-though given the disorienting mess that was 2018’s Crimes of Grindelwald, that’s not a high bar to clear. But I’m not sure how much I would have missed had the screen remained dark. All nine of us present in the audience on opening night could hear the advertisements, but not see them.īy the start of the feature presentation, the visuals had flickered on, so my viewing experience for the third Beasts film was not compromised. Throughout all of the pre-film rigmarole-commercials and trivia, some previews and announcements-the screen didn’t work. The theater where I saw Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore had a problem.
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