Things are not looking good for Johnny Depp’s immediate career prospects after he revealed that he’d been forced to resign from the role of Grindelwald. Fantastic Beasts 3 is already shooting and the actor had asked for a delay in his next court case so that he could return to the set, but it looks like he won’t have to worry about that anymore after Warner Bros. essentially pushed him out of the door.
There had been initial backlash when his casting was first announced, and one of the reactive newspaper headlines led directly to the libel case that he lost, but fans have since firmly sided with the three-time Academy Award nominee after a series of courtroom revelations had them firmly in agreement that Amber Heard was the true villain of the piece.
Having already been dropped from his signature role as Jack Sparrow by Disney as they move forward on Pirates of the Caribbean movies without him, his chances of staying on as Grindelwald looked increasingly slim. And sure enough, the 57 year-old released a statement on his social media account earlier today regarding his decision to step away from Fantastic Beasts 3, which you can see below.
Depp’s got biographical drama Minamata set for release early next year, but following that, he doesn’t have any projects on the horizon. And after being kicked out of two major franchises and with even more legal battles to come, his career is in real danger of slipping away from him entirely. However, nobody is ever truly finished in a place as fickle as Hollywood and we wouldn’t count him out just yet. That being said, it might take him a long time to come anywhere close to recapturing his former glories.