Based on the consistent adulation, billions of dollars in box office takings, and its continued status as one of the most popular and beloved brands on the planet, Harry Potter is never going to go out of fashion. Fantastic Beasts, though? Not so much.
Warner Bros. invited criticism when it was first announced that a slim fictional textbook originally written to raise money for charity was set to be adapted into five feature-length fantasy blockbusters, and it would be fair to say that the adventures of Newt Scamander haven’t exactly done much to dispel the accusations that the entire franchise is a cash-grab above all else.
Well, that would be true were the prequels performing in line with their predecessors on a critical and commercial level, but that hasn’t been the case. In fact, following the disappointing performance of The Secrets of Dumbledore this year, Fantastic Beasts 4 hasn’t been given the okay as of yet, and there are lingering question marks as to whether or not it even will.
Between the first and third installments, Fantastic Beasts has dropped by almost $410 million in earnings, and by 27 percentage points on Rotten Tomatoes. That’s not ideal, but that hasn’t prevented the middle story in a saga everyone’s evidently gotten bored of from doing a serious turn on streaming this week.
As per FlixPatrol, not only is Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore the second most-watched title on both HBO Max and Amazon, but it’s additionally sitting in third place on Google Play Movies, and fourth on iTunes. The Wizarding World may be running on fumes, but a quartet of Top 5 placings on major on-demand platforms shows their might be life in the old dog yet.
