Fantastic Beasts might just be another casualty of Warner Bros. Discovery’s remodeling. Last year, Variety reported that the studio has no current plans for the Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts IP—and star Eddie Redmayne might have just confirmed that.
In an interview with NME, Redmayne revealed, “At the moment, there’s nothing that I’m aware of. So, as I’m aware, it’s' not something that’s on the cards.”
With the lead of Fantastic Beasts clueless about the future of the Wizarding World, we can possibly conclude that Fantastic Beasts, at least as we know it, is dead.
J.K. Rowling wrote the scripts for the three Fantastic Beasts films and originally planned for the franchise to have five films. But with the third film’s mediocre box office performance, plans for the fourth and fifth film were stalled. That’s not even accounting for the controversy surrounding the replacement of Johnny Depp with Mads Mikkelsen as Gellert Grindelwald, as well as the backlash Rowling received for comments on the transgender community.
In a previous statement, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav emphasized the importance on focusing on franchises: “What are we doing with a lot of the big franchises that we have? We’re focused on franchises.”
While Fantastic Beasts stagnates, Zavlav expressed his interest in doing “something” with J.K. Rowling and the Wizarding World. Fantastic Beasts might be off the table, but Rowling’s IP still has plenty to offer.
And if we’re lucky, might just get a Marauders franchise to replace the space left behind by Fantastic Beasts!
* This story originally appeared on Esquiremag.ph. Minor edits have been made by the Preview.ph editors.
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