Featured Image Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
Topics: Harry Potter, Warner Bros, TV And Film
In a move that I certainly didn’t see coming, Harry Potter fans are suddenly under the impression that the Fantastic Beasts franchise may not be dead after all.
Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them showed immense promise.
It boasted its own unique art style, a compelling story, and introduced us to a wonderful cast of new characters.
It excelled at the box office and appeared to mark a shiny new era for the Wizarding World franchise.
Advert
That promise soon faded.
The Crimes of Gindelwald and The Secrets of Dumbledore followed, with box office figures significantly dropping with each subsequent sequel.
The Secrets of Dumbledore secured just over $407 million, essentially half of the first film’s $814 million.
So what went wrong? It’s hard to know where to start.
The Secrets of Dumbledore was delayed as filming couldn’t begin when planned due to the COVID-19 pandemic, taking some of the wind out of the franchise’s sails.
And then Grindelwald actor Johnny Depp became caught up in a string of controversial high string libel cases; first in Depp v. News Group Newspapers Ltd, and then secondly in Depp v. Heard.
As such, the actor was replaced by Mads Mikkelsen.
That’s still not all; Ezra Miller, who portrayed Credence, hit the headlines in the early 2020s for a string of incidents with the actor charged with disorderly conduct and harassment.
And then let’s not forget that it was in 2018 that the JK Rowling anti-trans controversy began to emerge, which continued to gain notoriety in the following years.
It was in 2020 that Rowling posted her harmful tweet regarding “people who menstruate”.
Fantastic Beasts, as a franchise, became a PR nightmare - and that’s without me even addressing the story.
I do think the franchise had an interesting story to tell, had it not been executed so poorly.
The fun of that original film, Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, was completely stripped away in the following two, making for too drastic of a shift.
Katherine Waterston’s female lead, Tina Goldstein, was almost entirely absent from The Secrets of Dumbledore, only adding to that jarring feeling.
And then there’s Queenie, who went from a whimsical fan-favourite to a temporary Wizard Nazi.
It’s like the franchise forgot it was called Fantastic Beasts, becoming a tad too caught up in the rise of Grindelwald.
As such, the planned fourth and fifth films were seemingly canned as we’ve heard nothing since that third film dropped in 2022.
Around that time, director David Yates made reference to the situation in the Inside Total Film podcast, saying the following: “I’m sure at some point, we’ll be back … we’re just taking a pause. It’s quite nice.”
Clearly, the situation was a tad more severe than that as the pause appears to be indefinite.
Despite being several years old, that quote has begun doing the rounds online after it was shared by X/Twitter account HPMoviesNews with many believing it to be new.
If it was ever in doubt as to how fans feel about Fantastic Beasts though, they’re glad it’s not making a return.
“No one wants this. Fantastic Beasts were an epic failure,” wrote one user.
“They need some serious course correction. It didn’t really work,” added another.
I’ll be honest, I just can’t see a comeback happening; Fantastic Beasts is too far gone.