After three films, and dwindling box office returns for each successive movie, the “Fantastic Beasts” franchise may officially be over. Variety reports (via Total Film) that David Yates, who helmed all three of “Harry Potter” prequels (and the final four in the original franchise) revealed in a new interview that the series is “parked.” And it’s news to him that the plan all along was for “Fantastic Beasts” to be a five-film series.
“With “Beasts,” it’s all just parked,” Yates told Total Film. “We made those three movies, the last one through a pandemic, and it was enormous fun but it was tough. We were actually filming when there wasn’t a vaccine. Thankfully, no one got sick, but we did have the most detailed protocols in place.” After pandemic delays, “The Secrets Of Dumbledore” hit theaters last year to poor reviews and middling box office numbers. The movie made only $407 worldwide against the $814 million gross of 2016’s “Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them” and $654.9 million for 2018’s “Fantastic Beats: The Crimes Of Grindelwald.” But Yates still enjoyed working on “The Secrets Of Dumbledore.” “We’re all so proud of it,” he continued, “and when it went out into the world, we just needed to sort of stop and pause and take it easy.”
The franchise’s demise at the box office had many speculating that Warner Bros. would shelve the series for good. But according to Yates, he never even knew that “Harry Potter” creator J.K. Rowling had a plan to make five “Fantastic Beasts” movies in the first place. The idea that there were going to be five films was a surprise to most of us,” Yates said. “Jo just mentioned it spontaneously, at a press screening once. No one had told us there were going to be five, we’d committed to the first one… I’m sure at some point, we’ll be back. But yeah, I haven’t spoken to Jo, I haven’t spoken to [producer] David Heyman, I haven’t spoken to Warner Bros.; we’re just taking a pause. It’s quite nice. It allows me to do stuff like this [Yates’ Netflix drama “Pain Hustlers].””
So will Yates return to J.K. Rowling’s world of wizardry after “Pain Husters”? Even the director doesn’t know that yet; he’s simply grateful he made a movie in a different world for the first time in a long time. “Having spent such a long time making films about wizards, I wanted to do a film in the real world and a social-issue driven, but one that wasn’t too earnest and serious,” Yates told Variety before the world premiere of his new film at TIFF. “I wanted to tell a story that was entertaining and funny in a subversive kind of way. I’m moving from a heightened world of J.K. Rowling, but I’m not going straight to kitchen-sink drama. The characters here are so heightened and crazy and the world is so intense.”
So it remains to be seen if the “Fantastic Beasts” franchise continues.