Fantastic Beasts 3 Gets New Release Date

Warner Bros. has pushed back its third Fantastic Beasts film from November 20, 2020 to November 12, 2021, The Hollywood Reporter‘s Borys Kit reported on Twitter Monday.

The film, again penned by Harry Potter mastermind J.K. Rowling and directed by longtime Wizarding World franchise director David Yates, comes after its predecessor, The Crimes of Grindelwald, conjured the lowest box office of the Harry Potter series at $653 million worldwide.

“The second film didn’t perform as well as the first, but I think we know what we need to do to get the third film hopefully even better than the first one,” then Warner Bros. president Kevin Tsujihara told the LA Times in February.

“And J.K. Rowling is really working hard now on that third script, and we’re going to get it right. She has an incredible vision of where she wants to go with this that is incredibly exciting. The hardest part of the franchise is you have such a big core fan base. That fan base really knows the lore and they want to go deep into these characters. But what you don’t want to do is intimidate people. You want to be able to create a stand-alone movie that’s enjoyable for someone who isn’t steeped in the lore.”

The prequel-slash-spinoff Fantastic Beasts series was long envisioned as a five-movie saga, centered around the adventures of Magizoologist Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) and exploring the histories of great wizards Dumbledore (Jude Law) and Grindelwald (Johnny Depp).

The currently unnamed third entry was pushed back in January from a July 2019 start to late fall, a delay caused by the film’s reported heft.

“The movie is going to be gigantic,” star Dan Fogler explained previously.

“The reason we were given is that the movie is bigger than the first two combined. They needed more time to prep and they didn’t want to rush anything so they pushed it back. I can tell you that we are going to Brazil. I don’t really know much… [laughs]. I’ll get a script closer to when we start shooting.”

Fantastic Beasts 3 releases November 12, 2021.

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