Fantastic Beasts filmmaker David Yates told Total Film that the Harry Potter spinoff feature franchise “is parked.”
That’s a very similar message to what he told us back at TIFF, however, that was in regards to his involvement with the overall Harry Potter franchise. (Read, “It’s been about ‘Let’s just park it, and be done for a while.’” he told Deadline’s Natalie Sitek and Damon Wise).
We’ve reached out to Warner Bros to get an update on whether the J.K. Rowling spinoff features are truly on ice; the author originally announcing on a pre-fan day for the film back in 2016 with producer David Heyman that the plan was for five Fantastic Beasts movies, set in five different cities.
Fantastic Beasts followed the adventures of writer Newt Scamander (who penned one of Harry Potter’s textbooks) in New York’s secret community of witches and wizards. The pic is set 70 years before Harry Potter reads his book in school; and Hogwarts principal Albus Dumbledore’s early days are portrayed in the Fantastic Beasts movies.
“With Beasts, it’s all just parked,” Yates told Total Film; the filmmaker on a press tour or his new Netflix movie Pain Hustlers starring Emily Blunt and Chris Evans. “We made those three movies, the last one through a pandemic, and it was enormous fun, but it was tough.”
“We’re all so proud of [Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore],” added Yates to Total Film. “When it went out into the world, we just needed to sort of stop and pause, and take it easy.”
The third movie, which saw an Amber Heard suit-laden Johnny Depp swapped out as Grindelwald for Mads Mikkelsen in Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, was the lowest grossing movie in the franchise, partially hampered due to slow-returning moviegoers during the pandemic. End result was $95.8M domestic, and north of $407M WW. The pic did receive a theatrical window, and was cited by Warner Bros Discovery CEO David Zaslav as a top viewed movie on Max following the Jason Kilar enforced studio era of theatrical day-and-date titles on Max during the 2021 portion of the pandemic.
Out of the eight films based on the seven Harry Potter books, Yates directed the last four movies, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007), Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009) and Deathly Hallows Part One and Two (2010 and 2011). Yates directed the entire Fantastic Beasts trilogy. In sum, you could say he knows something about Potter: In the $9.7 billion franchise that spans both Potter and Fantastic Beasts, his movies rep 63% of that franchise global box office total or $6.07 billion.
HBO is busy in the works for a Harry Potter streaming series on Max. That was announced back in April before Hollywood’s double WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes.
Whether Yates would still be involved with that new series, he told Deadline “Never say never” and that he was “excited about moving on” beyond the fantasy juggernaut.
“I have other projects on my desk, which are a million miles away from wizards and involved all sorts of things which are non-wizard associated,” added Yates.