How Many Fantastic Beasts Movies Will There Be?

04/16/2022 07:57 pm EDT

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore is now in theaters, the third film the Wizarding World franchise that generally serves as a prequel to the Harry Potter films, set seven decades before the Boy Who Lived's adventures with a story that follows Newt Scamander (played by Eddie Redmayne), the fictional author of the book "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them". But while the films are meant to further inspire wonder for audiences by going deeper into the world's history, some of that wonder has been tarnished. There has been a lot of controversy and other challenges behind-the-scenes, even from the very first film. Between controversy over the reveal of Johnny Depp as Gellert Grindelwald at the end of the first film and later his eventual departure from the franchise during production on The Secrets of Dumbledore, to Ezra Miller's public strife — including his recent arrest just days before the third film's premiere, and even franchise creator J.K. Rowling's own controversies, there's been speculation about the future of the franchise, all begging the question how many films will there actually be in the Fantastic Beasts series.

Warning: this article will contain some spoilers for The Secrets of Dumbledore. You may want to turn back if you don't want to know.

When the first film, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, was first announced in 2014, it was announced that the film would start a trilogy with the films to be released in 2016, 2018, and 2020. Rowling would write the screenplay and they films would be directed by David Yates, who directed the final four installments of the Harry Potter films. Then, in 2016, Rowling announced that the franchise would actually comprise five films, noting at the time that they initially set it as a trilogy as a "placeholder" because they knew it would be more than one film, but it grew by two more films.

"We always knew that it was going to be more than one movie — we knew that from the start — so we set a trilogy as a sort of placeholder, because we knew there would be more than one movie," Rowling said at the time. "But I've now done the plotting properly, so we're pretty sure it's going to be five movies."

The Secrets of Dumbledore gets the franchise over the halfway point, but now parts four and five are uncertain. Recently, it was reported that Warner Bros. waiting to see how the latest film performs to decide if they will greenlight the last two films. And that's where things could get interesting. The film is getting off to a slow start at the domestic box office and has the series' lowest projected opening weekend yet. The film isn't doing especially well with critics either. The film at present as a 49 percent critic's score at Rotten Tomatoes — a number that falls in the "rotten" range, with the general consensus being that the while the film does manage to avoid the problems of Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, it's also a far cry from the magic of the overall Wizarding World. While the film still could perform well at the foreign box office, there does seem to be a sense of diminishing returns in the franchise. The first film was very successful with a global box office of more than $800 million, The Crimes of Grindelwald saw a nearly 20 percent decline with only $650 million. The third film may end up even lower, which could certainly pose a financial concern for anything further — especially since making the films comes in around $200 million each.

Between the controversies and the diminishing returns of the Fantastic Beasts film, it seems more than a little possible that The Secrets of Dumbledore may indeed be the final film in the franchise. If that is the case, the most recent film does land things in a place where the story could end and not be wholly unsatisfying. (Spoilers) The film ultimately sees the blood pact that prevented Dumbledore and Grindelwald from attacking each other broken and thus a battle between the two ensues. However, after fighting to a stalemate, Grindelwald eventually retreats, defeated. If the franchise ends there, it's a complete story even if some threads — namely how Dumbledore ends up in the epic duel with Grindelwald in 1945 that sees the former take the Elder Wand — remain. On top of that, it's been reported that there is no screenplay for the fourth film and when you add in the shifts due to the recent Warner/Discovery merger, it certainly seems like the Wizarding World has closed this chapter.

Between numerous off-screen controversies, diminishing returns at the box office, and even what seems like a natural ending of the story, time may be up for the Fantastic Beasts films, leaving what was once meant to be a five-film franchise done instead as a trilogy and leaving fans to look for magic somewhere else.

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore is in theaters now.

Disclosure: ComicBook is owned by CBS Interactive, a division of Paramount. Sign up for Paramount+ by clicking here.