Long Range Forecast: ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them’ & ‘The Edge of Seventeen’

November 18 will will see the release of one of the most anticipated films of the year, with Warner Bros.’ new Harry Potter spinoff, but will it earn as much money as the eight installments we all know and love? (Note: our forecast write-up for STX Entertainment’s The Edge of Seventeen is largely adapted from a previous write-up we posted a few weeks ago, for our preview of films debuting on September 30. The release date was recently pushed back a few weeks to November 18.)

Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them (Warner Bros.)

PROS:

• The Harry Potter franchise was a cash bonanza, across eight films spanning more than a decade and becoming one of the highest-grossing and most iconic movie series of all time.
• Subsequent Potter installments have proven popular, with the script for the play co-penned by Rowling called Harry Potter and the Cursed Child shooting straight to the top of the bestseller list. Clearly, Potter-mania — even if slightly lower than at its early- and mid-2000s heights — has not ended at all.
• This is Rowling’s first original screenplay, since other screenwriters such as David Kloves adapted Rowling’s previous novels for the screen. This is an original story, unconnected to any previous Rowling book. That sense of “new” could attract Rowling’s fans, of which there are many — it may not be an exaggeration to call her the single most popular author on planet Earth alive today.
• The lowest-grossing Potter film adjusted for inflation was 2010’s Deathly Hallows Part 1 with about $320 million. So even if the Fantastic Beasts spinoff performs lower than that, it seems difficult to imagine it ending up with less than the low-$200 million range, at a minimum.

CONS:

• With Eddie Redmayne starring and no Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, or Alan Rickman, in some ways this will be like starting from scratch for the franchise, without any instantly-recognizable characters. Audiences flocked to see Hermione Granger and Severus Snape, but will they for Newt Scamander?
• It’s already been announced that Warner Bros. plans to release second and third installments, also to be penned by Rowling. That may be a case of counting chickens before they hatch of Warner’s part. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was also a wildly popular book and the first of a trilogy, with plans to adapt all three into films, but the original’s good-but-not-great box office gross ended plans for a second and third movie installment. Something similar could potentially be at risk of happening here.

The Edge of Seventeen (STX Entertainment)

PROS:

• Star Hailee Steinfeld has had box office hits in the past few years with $100+ million releases including Pitch Perfect 2 and True Grit. 
• “Sleeper” potential here. This may be for Steinfeld what Easy A was for Emma Stone at a similar age, with the added benefit of a potential awards season boost and interest from both teens and adults.
• The coming of age comedy-drama could appeal to teenagers, especially teenage girls.

CONS:

• Teenagers love Harry Potter and always have, and the recent postponement of release to instead go up against Fantastic Beasts may have been the wrong choice here. (Although under its previous release date it would have debuted against Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, which also would have provided some competition for a similar demographic.)
• Steinfeld’s box office hits were as part of an ensemble. It remains to be seen whether she can bring in audiences as a lead.
• Reception online has been relatively muted, although again this could turn out to be more of a sleeper hit than a big debut.

Check out the official Boxoffice Pro long range forecasts in the table below.