Box Office Top 20: 'Fantastic Beasts' summons $74.4 million

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Kicking off a five-film franchise spun off from the Harry Potter universe, "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" debuted to a healthy $74.4 million this weekend.

The $180 million production benefited from lingering Harry Potter goodwill, but failed to reach the heights of those films in its first weekend.

The J.K Rowling creation unseated "Doctor Strange" from its two-week run at No. 1.

The strength of the top five films, including holdovers Trolls, ''Arrival and Almost Christmas left little room for the other new openers, like the R-rated high school dramedy The Edge of Seventeen, which debuted outside of the top 10 with $4.8 million and the fact-based boxing drama Bleed for This, which took in $2.4 million.

[...] Ang Lee's technologically ambitious wartime drama "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" bombed in its expansion, earning only $901,062 from 1,176 locations for an abysmal $766 per screen average.

The top 20 movies at U.S. and Canadian theaters Friday through Sunday, followed by distribution studio, gross, number of theater locations, average receipts per location, total gross and number of weeks in release, as compiled Monday by comScore:

"Nocturnal Animals," Focus Features, $492,648, 37 locations, $13,315 average, $492,648, 1 week.

Universal and Focus are owned by NBC Universal, a unit of Comcast Corp.; Sony, Columbia, Sony Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Classics are units of Sony Corp.; Paramount is owned by Viacom Inc.; Disney, Pixar and Marvel are owned by The Walt Disney Co.; Miramax is owned by Filmyard Holdings LLC; 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight are owned by 21st Century Fox; Warner Bros. and New Line are units of Time Warner Inc.; MGM is owned by a group of former creditors including Highland Capital, Anchorage Advisors and Carl Icahn; Lionsgate is owned by Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.; IFC is owned by AMC Networks Inc.; Rogue is owned by Relativity Media LLC.