Friday box office:

It’s back to Hogwarts, on discount. “Fantastic Beasts 2,” not warmly reviewed, is well off the pace of the original. The new film is set to make $61-64 million, compared to the original’s $75 million. This will be the first stumble in the “Harry Potter” saga after nine films. It’s about time. Worldwide, though, “Grindewald” should do fine, especially in places where the usual elements don’t need to make sense.

Gary Hart is still not winning any races. The former Colorado senator, played by Hugh Jackman in “The Front Runner,” is out of steam already. Jason Reitman’s film is very good, but this is one that might have had a better life on HBO or Netflix. There’s not enough sizzle to push people into theaters. I think Sony knew this a couple of months ago so they haven’t put a lot into it.

Mark Wahlberg and Rose Byrne got some nice notices for “Instant Family,” a modern take on “With Six You Get Eggroll” or “Please Don’t Eat the Daisies.” Blended family stories, adoption stories, and so on have always been time tested moderate hits. And that’s what this will be– $13 million for the weekend counting on matinees today and tomorrow. Then a nice life on DVD, streaming, cable, airplanes. It’s a weekend low for Wahlberg, maybe lower than his recent “Mile 22.” It’s time for “Ted 3,” if there wasn’t one already.

It won’t be that soon, but in a couple of years we may see a feature length documentary about Bill Cosby’s fall from grace.

A major studio has made a deal for a Cosby doc by a filmmaker with at least one hit project on her resume.

For the moment, I’m not going to divulge the studio or filmmaker’s identities so they can continue with their work uninterrupted.

But I’ve spoken to the filmmaker, who’s in touch with Cosby and his family on a regular basis. She says Cosby– despite tabloid stories– is doing very well in prison. “He’s separated from the general pubic,” the filmmaker says, “but when he’s with them, he’s a star, and they’re delighted to see him. Imagine Bill with a captive audience.”

Camille Cosby has apparently agreed to be part of the film although it’s unclear how candid she will be. It’s the same for their daughters. But plenty of Cosby friends and loyalists are participating.

It’s also unclear still whether Cosby will be allowed to give an interview from prison. Cosby is incarcerated at Pennsylvania’s newest, biggest, and most expensive prison, State Correctional Institution Phoenix, a $400 million, 3,830-bed complex in Montgomery County.

Stay tuned…if this film comes off as planned, it will be huge…

The Independent Spirit Awards may have trouble finding 95,000 people to watch their broadcast on IFC next February. Their nominees today swung from prior years’ Oscar overlaps to movies almost no one has seen. They gave their Robert Altman Award to “Suspiria,” a movie literally no one has seen and doesn’t deserve it under any circumstances. Altman must be rolling in his grave. What a mess. Their most nominated film, “We the Animals,” made $400,000 this summer.

Yikes! No wonder Film Independent shut down the LA Film Festival. To quote Lynn Ramsay: “you were never really here.”

BEST FEATURE

Eighth Grade

First Reformed

If Beale Street Could Talk

Leave No Trace

You Were Never Really Here

BEST FEMALE LEAD

Glenn Close, The Wife

Toni Collette, Hereditary 

Elsie Fisher, Eighth Grade

Regina Hall, Support the Girls

Helena Howard, Madeline’s Madeline 

Carey Mulligan, Wildlife 

BEST MALE LEAD

John Cho, Searching

Daveed Diggs, Blindspotting

Ethan Hawke, First Reformed 

Christian Malheiros, Socrates

Joaquin Phoenix, You Were Never Really Here

BEST DIRECTOR

Debra Granik, Leave No Trace 

Barry Jenkins, If Beale Street Could Talk 

Tamara Jenkins, Private Life

Lynne Ramsay, You Were Never Really Here

Paul Schrader, First Reformed

BEST DOCUMENTARY

Hale County This Morning, This Evening

Minding the Gap

Of Fathers and Sons

On Her Shoulders

Shirkers

Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

BEST SUPPORTING MALE

Raúl Castillo, We the Animals 

Adam Driver, BlacKkKlansman

Richard E. Grant, Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Josh Hamilton, Eighth Grade

John David Washington, Monsters and Men 

BEST SCREENPLAY

Richard Glatzer (Writer/Story By), Rebecca Lenkiewicz & Wash Westmoreland, Colette

Nicole Holofcener & Jeff Whitty, Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Tamara Jenkins, Private Life

Boots Riley, Sorry to Bother You

Paul Schrader, First Reformed

ROBERT ALTMAN AWARD

Suspiria

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

Ashley Connor, Madeline’s Madeline 

Diego Garcia, Wildlife

Benjamin Loeb, Mandy

Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, Suspiria

Zak Mulligan, We the Animals

PRODUCERS AWARD – The 22nd annual Producers Award honors emerging producers who, despite highly limited resources, demonstrate the creativity, tenacity and vision required to produce quality, independent films. The award includes a $25,000 unrestricted grant.

Jonathan Duffy and Kelly Williams

Gabrielle Nadig

Shrihari Sathe

SOMEONE TO WATCH AWARD – The 25th annual Someone to Watch Award recognizes a talented filmmaker of singular vision who has not yet received appropriate recognition. The award includes a $25,000 unrestricted grant.

Alex Moratto

Director of Sócrates

Ioana Uricaru

Director of Lemonade

Jeremiah Zagar

Director of We the Animals

TRUER THAN FICTION AWARD – The 24th annual Truer Than Fiction Award is presented to an emerging director of non-fiction features who has not yet received significant recognition. The award includes a $25,000 unrestricted grant.

Alexandria Bombach

Director of On Her Shoulders

Bing Liu

Director of Minding the Gap

RaMell Ross

Director of Hale County This Morning, This Evening

The Independent Spirit Awards used to go to indie films, actors, and directors. But in recent years, the awards– given by Film Independent out in Los Angeles– have turned into an Oscars Jr. Most of the nominations and awards go to the same people who receive nominations and awards for the Oscars.

So why have them at all? Good question. Last year, only 95,000 people bothered to watch the live ceremny on TV the afternoon before the Academy Awards.

There is so much overlap between the Spirit Award winners and the Oscar winners, it’s become a little ridiculous. At least his past year, “Get Out” won the Spirit Award was only an Oscar nominee. But in the years preceding, “Moonlight,” “Spotlight,” and “Birdman” all won both awards. Immediately before that, almost all the Spirit Award Best Features were the same as the Oscar equivalent, as well as the acting awards.

On top of that, Film Independent– the organization that gives out these awards– just announced they’re shutting down their other biggest enterprise, the LA Film Festival. It makes you wonder, what’s going on when they can’t even sustain that project.

So here we go again: down to Santa Monica to the freezing tent, the photo ops and weird private tents underwritten by sponsors who are getting what exactly out of it? No one who’s ever made an indie film can afford a Piaget watch. But they sponsor some of the Spirit Awards.

Nominees as follows:

William Goldman, oracle of Hollywood, Oscar winner for writing “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “All the President’s Men,” has died at age 87. His death is a big deal, and a tragedy that will be observed all weekend no doubt in memoriams by his many friends and writers whom he mentored.

Goldman’s other credits included “The Princess Bride,” “Papillon,” “Heat,” Marathon Man” and many other classic films of our era. He was also a huge influence on the screenplay for “Good Will Hunting,” an unseen hand that guided Ben Affleck and Matt Damon to their Oscar.

Goldman’s 1983 memoir, Adventures in the Screen Trade, is considered the holy grail of Hollywood remembrances.