If you were hoping the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them franchise would return, I wouldn’t hold your breath. Eddie Redmayne, who stars in the Fantastic Beasts franchise as Newt Scamander, gave a less-than-optimistic update while speaking with ComicBook.com.
“I think they probably have [seen the last of Newt],” Redmayne said. “That was a very frank answer, but yeah. And that’s as far as I know. I mean, you’d have to speak to the people at Warner Bros. and J.K Rowling, but as far as I know, that’s it. I think he may come back in a glimpse in the Universal world in Florida that they’re opening up, in which you may catch a glimpse of what he was up to in Paris.“
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them got the franchise off to a good start, grossing $811 million worldwide. Unfortunately, the sequel, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, found that number falling to $648 million. The third installment, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, fell even further, grossing just $407 million, making it the lowest-grossing film in the entire Wizarding World franchise. It was announced early on that the Fantastic Beasts franchise would consist of five movies, but those diminishing returns make that very unlikely.
Jude Law, who played Albus Dumbledore in the last two movies, also recently acknowledged that the series isn’t likely to continue. “I know it’s certainly on hold,” Law told Variety. “My guess would be that, now that they’re doing ‘Harry Potter’ as a TV show, they’ll probably put their energy into that. I certainly haven’t heard that there’s anything on the horizon.” The actor added that J.K. Rowling did tell him about Dumbledore’s complete arc, so he “had a pretty clear sense of where it was going to go.“
As Law mentioned, Warner Bros. is currently developing a Harry Potter TV series for HBO, with each season covering one of Rowling’s novels for a total of seven seasons. While the movies were able to fit quite a lot in, there were plenty of moments cut from the novels that the TV series will finally be able to bring to life. Last year, the studio released a statement saying, “Each season will be authentic to the original books and bring Harry Potter and these incredible adventures to new audiences around the world, while the original, classic and beloved films will remain at the core of the franchise and available to watch globally.“ As this seems to be the priority for the Wizarding World franchise, the Fantastic Beasts franchise does appear to be dead.