Fantastic Beasts: JK Rowling franchise has been ‘parked’, director says

The Harry Potter spin-off prequel series Fantastic Beasts has been “parked” by Warner Bros, according to its director David Yates.

Speaking to the Inside Total Film podcast, Yates, who has directed every Wizarding World movie since 2007’s Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, said: “We’re all so proud of [2022’s Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore] and when it went out into the world, we just needed to sort of stop and pause and take it easy.”

He said the third Fantastic Beasts film, which was shot early in the Covid-19 pandemic, had been a difficult undertaking.

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“With Beasts, it’s all just parked. We made those three movies, we made the last one through a pandemic, and it was enormous fun but it was tough,” he said.

“We were actually filming when there wasn’t a vaccine. Thank goodness no one got sick, but we did have the most detailed protocols in place.”

The Secrets of Dumbledore netted just $407m at the international box office, compared with the first film in the franchise, 2016’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which grossed $814m, and the second movie, 2018’s The Crimes of Grindelwald, which took $654m.

The franchise has also been dogged by controversy arising from its stars and writer. JK Rowling, the Harry Potter creator who received the sole screenwriting credit for the first two Fantastic Beasts films and was co-writer on the third, has been widely criticised for her outspoken views on transgender issues.

Johnny Depp, who played Grindelwald in the first two Fantastic Beasts films, was in 2020 asked to resign from the franchise days after he lost his libel case against the Sun, which had referred to the actor as a “wife-beater” following accusations of domestic violence made against him by his ex-wife Amber Heard.

And Ezra Miller, another of the franchise’s stars, made headlines in 2022 after they were arrested multiple times; Miller eventually pleaded guilty to unlawful trespassing and revealed they were seeking treatment for “complex mental health issues”.

Yates revealed to the podcast that the franchise’s five-film plan had not initially been on the cards.

“The idea that there were going to be five [Fantastic Beasts] films was a total surprise to most of us,” he said.

“Jo just mentioned it spontaneously, at a press screening once. We were presenting some clips of FB1 [Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them]. We’d all signed up for FB1, very enthusiastically. And Jo, bless her, came on … and Jo said, ‘Oh, by the way, there’s five of them.’ And we all looked at each other because no one had told us there were going to be five. We’d sort of committed to this one. So that was the first we’d heard of it.”

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Yates, whose is now promoting his latest film, the Netflix opioid drama Pain Hustlers starring Emily Blunt, said that making The Secrets of Dumbledore was “a wonderful experience”, but he was relishing the opportunity to “pause” and pursue other projects.

“And I haven’t spoken to Jo, I haven’t spoken to [producer] David Hayman, I haven’t spoken to Warner Bros, we’re just taking a pause. And it’s quite nice.

“I’m sure at some point we may well be back, who can tell, we haven’t got any in-depth conversations at the moment.”