The winner: Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

The latest film from the wizarding world of JK Rowling has unsurprisingly debuted at the top of the UK box office, knocking aside The Grinch. Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald’s opening weekend take of £12.32m is the second biggest of the year so far, behind only Avengers: Infinity War’s £21.1m haul (or £29.4m including previews).

A couple of other 2018 releases – Black Panther and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom – posted bigger debut numbers than the wizard film, but only thanks to the inclusion of preview takings. On like-for-like comparison, The Crimes of Grindelwald opened bigger than those two films.

Any celebrations for backers Warner Bros will be muted by the fact that the second Fantastic Beasts film is running behind the pace of the first. Exactly two years ago, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them kicked off with a nifty £15.3m, on its way to a total of £54.7m. If The Crimes of Grindelwald follows the same pattern as its predecessor, look for it to reach around £44m by the end of its run.

The runners-up: The Grinch and Bohemian Rhapsody

Jostling for second and third place at the UK box office are The Grinch and Bohemian Rhapsody, both experiencing relatively modest declines. Illumination Entertainment’s Dr Seuss animation fell by just 22% for second-weekend takings of £3.91m and a 10-day total just above £10m. The whole Christmas holiday is yet to come for this family-friendly festive comedy, which should soon steam past the £15.2m total for the Jim Carrey live-action version from 18 years ago. (As it should: ticket prices are now substantially higher.)

Falling by 34% from the previous session, Bohemian Rhapsody suffered its biggest decline to date. Fourth-weekend takings just above £3m push the tally after 26 days to a very robust £34.9m. Bohemian Rhapsody is now the seventh-biggest release of 2018. It’s also behind the 2018 takings of one 2017 film – The Greatest Showman – so it currently ranks in eighth place for the year.

The indie alternative: Suspiria

Landing inside the Top 10 with box office of £166,000 is Luca Guadagnino’s remake of Dario Argento’s cult horror Suspiria, starring Dakota Johnson and Tilda Swinton. That number is swelled by significant preview takings – for the weekend, the Berlin-set film grossed an OK £88,500 from 76 cinemas. Argento’s 1977 film was released before the age of official data collection, so comparisons are not possible, but Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name began in October 2017 with £236,000 from 111 cinemas, including negligible previews.

The music events: Coldplay and BTS

Burn the Stage: The Movie lands in the chart in sixth place with takings of £644,000. This event-cinema release featuring K-pop sensations BTS earned £337,000 in UK cinemas from its global launch day last Thursday, and then added another £307,000 from encore showings on Saturday and Sunday. Globally, Burn the Stage has grossed $14m so far – its 1.4m admissions represents the biggest number ever for an event-cinema release, says distributor, Trafalgar.

Missing from the weekend chart is Coldplay: A Head Full of Dreams, which grossed £509,000 in the UK last Wednesday. Because the film – which is directed by Mat Whitecross and combines archive and live footage – didn’t play encores at the weekend, it doesn’t register in the official box office chart for the period. Global gross was $3.5m from 2,650 cinemas in over 70 countries.

The market

Thanks to the arrival of the new JK Rowling film, the market is 20% ahead of the equivalent weekend from 2017, which was led pretty robustly by Justice League and Paddington 2. We are now headed into the home stretch for November, and cinema operators will have hopes pinned on a couple of new titles arriving on Wednesday: The Girl in the Spider’s Web (a continuation of the franchise based on Stieg Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander character) and a new take on Robin Hood, starring Taron Egerton and Jamie Foxx. These are followed on Friday by the latest in the Nativity festive family comedy franchise, Nativity Rocks!, and Tyler Perry comedy Nobody’s Fool. Indie alternatives include Assassination Nation and Palme d’Or winner Shoplifters.

Top 10 films 16-18 November

1. Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, £12,318,966 from 674 sites (new)

2. The Grinch, £3,906,597 from 565 cinemas. Total: £10,044,223 (two weeks)

3. Bohemian Rhapsody, £3,021,648 from 647 sites. Total: £34,854,038 (four weeks)

4. Widows, £882,243 from 557 sites. Total: £4,317,425 (two weeks)

5. A Star Is Born, £746,986 from 474 sites. Total: £27,107,688 (seven weeks)

6. Burn the Stage: The Movie, £644,308 from 212 sites (new)

7. The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, £610,974 from 539 sites. Total: £4,326,066 (three weeks)

8. Johnny English Strikes Again, £215,252 from 315 sites. Total: £17,411,221 (seven weeks)

9. Suspiria, £166,257 from 77 sites (new)

10. Smallfoot, £161,068 from 392 sites. Total: £10,840,021 (six weeks)

Other openers

Hell Fest, £78,116 from 83 sites

Make Us Dream, £37,431 (including £32,580 previews) from three sites

Muslum, £12,966 from three sites

Taxiwala, £12,552 from 22 sites

The Price of Everything, £10,087 (including £2,645 previews) from five sites

9 to 5, £7,514 from four sites

Dead in a Week or Your Money Back, £7,344 from 21 sites

Kaatrin Mozhi, £7,128 from five sites

The Workshop, £5,995 from seven sites

My Brilliant Friend, £3,356 from two sites

3 Days in Quiberon, £3,051 from four sites

Becoming Animal, £93 from one site

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs – box office not reported

• Thanks to Comscore. All figures relate to takings in UK and Ireland cinemas.