From the outside looking in, the chances of the Fantastic Beasts franchise returning to round out its planned five-film arc exist somewhere between slim and none.
Sure, the Wizarding World might be a money-making juggernaut that’s seen its big screen outings combine to earn over $9.7 billion at the box office, but when the prequel spin-offs conspired to deliver its three worst-reviewed and lowest-earning entries ever – with The Secrets of Dumbledore earning almost $250 million less than its already-disappointing predecessor – is finishing the story even worth it?
That’s without even mentioning Warner Bros.’ plans to reboot Harry Potter as an episodic streaming series, which would theoretically place Fantastic Beasts as the prequels to a saga that the studio responsible isn’t even considering as definitive anymore when there’s a new version of the exact same tales in the works, so fourth and fifth installments seems fanciful at best.
Regardless, director David Yates remains confident it isn’t dead yet, sharing to Total Film his belief that the band will get back together eventually.
“With Beasts, it’s all just parked. 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. We’re all so proud of [The Secrets of Dumbledore] and when it went out into the world, we just needed to sort of stop and pause, and take it easy. I’m sure at some point, we’ll be back.”
The Potter brand ain’t what it used to be for a number of reasons, and at this stage we’d be a lot more shocked if Fantastic Beasts returned at the expense of Warner Bros. officially dragging it round back and putting the property out of its misery.