AT&T/Warner Bros. wants to continue a “Wizarding World” that started with the Harry Potter film saga and then with what is supposed to be a five-part Fantastic Beasts series.
However, is it in trouble?
First, difficult situations face a pair of actors who have been integral to the franchise.
One, Ezra Miller, seems to have choked a woman and thrown her to the ground, according to NBC News. (And he’s not under investigation for it after police didn’t make any arrests nor put anyone in custody after the violence.) The other, Johnny Depp, is in a high-profile legal battle. While reportedly not naming Deep by name, Depp’s ex-wife Amber Heard wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post talking about being abused. Depp has sued for defamation, claiming $50 million in damages.
It doesn’t appear that Fantastic Beasts is considering re-casting the actor to play Miller’s character, Credence Barebone.
But former Miller fan Danzel Samuel started a Change.org petition to remove Miller from Fantastic Beasts and also The Flash.
(And Depp, while losing his role as Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean, is still set to star as Gellert Grindelwald in Fantastic Beasts, according to Deadline.) This signals that even fans may be upset with Miller. Would this reflect enough of a problem to threaten ticket sales for the next film?
However, Fantastic Beasts is already in trouble because its box office plummeted from the first installment, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them ($813 million), to the second, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald ($655 million).
That’s a $158 million fall — a 24.1% drop.
Further, the quality of storytelling was bad enough that Steve Kloves was added as a screenwriter for the third film. (Kloves wrote all but one of the Harry Potter film scripts.)
Then there’s the possibility that Fantastic Beasts could take a hit because of fans’ negative reaction to J.K. Rowling’s comments about transgender people, as Variety reported.
Rowling was the screenwriter for the first two Fantastic Beasts films and is the co-writer for the third.
There’s a lot of matters at hand for the franchise and the Wizarding World it carries. We’ll see how it navigates it and how well.
What do you think? Is Fantastic Beasts in trouble? If so, how? Comment below!
