Fantastic Beasts 3 secures a November 2021 release date

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Despite the fact that the latest FANTASTIC BEASTS movie, THE CRIMES OF GRINDELWALD, received the worst reviews and lowest box office of any in the Wizarding World franchise Warner Bros. has every intention on keeping the Harry Potter spinoff series chugging. Fans of the series will have to wait a bit longer for the next magical outing, however, as it was announced today the new movie is slated to hit theaters November 12, 2021, with production expected to start spring 2020.

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Toby Emmerich, Warner Bros. Pictures Group chairman released a statement today (via Variety) saying, “We are incredibly excited about and have confidence in the ‘Fantastic Beasts’ series. We all believe this release date will give the filmmakers time and space to allow their artistry to truly flourish and deliver the best possible film to our fans.”

The main series of Harry Potter movies ended in 2011, and the first of the prequel/spinoff movies, FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM came out in 2016. The first BEASTS was met mostly with solid reviews from fans and critics, going on to earn $234 million domestically and $814 million worldwide. After its release, news broke that WB and book series author J.K. Rowling were planning on releasing five movies in this series, meant to span into the mid-2020s.

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The sequel, however, did not live up to the same heights as the first movie. Slammed by critics and audiences who felt the material was losing touch with what makes the Wizarding World so magical, it went on to make far less than the other movies with $159 million domestically and $653 million worldwide. That’s not chump change, but certainly not a good sign for a new sect of the franchise that was just getting started.

Centered on magizoologist Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne), the sequel expanded on the WW decades before HP showed up, and included the younger versions of Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law) and evil wizard Gellert Grindelwald (Johnny Depp). Come the end of the movie the latter sets out on his evil mission to, I don’t know, rid the world of Nazis or something, kicking off what I’m sure was supposed to be a thrilling new conflict between good and evil.

As an HP fan since the debut of the books all those years ago, and of the movies since they hit theaters, I can honestly say GRINDELWALD was the biggest disappointment of last year. A muddled, aimless and ugly mess, the movie was clearly designed to set up some huge stakes, but the over-abundance of characters and lack of focus on the ones that matter proved this series has no real clue where it’s going. Perhaps the extended wait time between movies will be used to figure out some pieces, and I do hope they figure things out and prove why we should care at all about these Fantastic Beasts movies that have very few beasts in them.