Credit: Warner Bros.The Harry Potter reboot could adopt the Fantastic Beasts trilogy as its own!
It looks like we won’t get another film in the Fantastic Beasts series, following the financially and critically underwhelming last two entries in the trilogy, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018) and Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022).
The Harry Potter spinoff series got off to a solid start with Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016), which was a loose adaptation of the in-universe magical creatures encyclopedia of the same name featuring Magizoologist Newt Scamander.
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But fans started losing interest when Warner Bros. hastily announced a further four films in the series.
It quickly became transparent that Warner Bros. was attempting to find the same success New Line Cinema did with The Hobbit trilogy, an expansion of the modestly-sized The Lord of the Rings precursor novel by JRR Tolkien.
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Not only is Fantastic Beasts also a bloated and unnecessary adaptation of a small book, but by the time The Crimes of Grindelwald was released, it was obvious that the films were trying to mirror The Hobbit films by acting as direct prequels to their flagship film series.
We’ll probably never get to see the fourth and fifth films, despite director David Yates — who has helmed every Wizarding World film since Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007) — recently confirming that Fantastic Beasts has been temporarily “parked.”
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But it’s pretty clear that most fans don’t care. The last two Fantastic Beasts films are insufferably dull and ultimately directionless — how does one make the Wizarding World so incredibly boring?
Much like the widely hated Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, there are some fans who would like to see the Fantastic Beasts films wiped from canon.
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However, they may get their wish, as there isn’t much that ties the Fantastic Beasts films to the eight Harry Potter films: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001), Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005), Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2010), and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part II (2011).
With the exception of Jamie Campbell Bower, who plays Gellert Grindelwald in flashbacks in Deathly Hallows parts one and two and returns briefly in The Crimes of Grindelwald, and Hebe Beardsall, who plays Albus Dumbledore‘s sister Ariana Dumbledore in a magic painting in Deathly Hallows — Part 2 and returns in the same medium in The Secrets of Dumbledore, there are no other actors connecting the two sets of films.
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It’s more than likely that the fourth and fifth Fantastic Beasts films would have featured some major Harry Potter actors to bridge the gap between both sets of films, but we’ll probably never know, as the chances of these sequels happening are about as likely as JK Rowling taking a week off from using X (formerly Twitter).
With that all said, it’s possible Fantastic Beasts will find a new home. The upcoming Harry Potter reboot series heading for HBO may adopt the spinoff trilogy as its own and perhaps even continue the rest of the story in a sideshow.
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This would also allow for actors such as Jude Law to reprise his role as Albus Dumbledore in the upcoming reboot, as the HBO television series will be based on the seven books by JK Rowling, with each season dedicated to an entire novel.
The reboot teaser also shows the exact same Hogwarts design as the one in the Harry Potter films (it also uses the same font and the same iconic score by John Williams). Incredibly lazy, sure, but seeing as the Fantastic Beasts films also feature the same Hogwarts (they are, after all, still prequels — for the time being, at least), this means that the reboot could quite easily adopt them as their own.
Per the official Max YouTube channel, check out the teaser below:
All the Harry Potter films are currently streaming on Netflix.
Do you think the Fantastic Beasts prequels should be wiped from canon? Let Inside the Magic know in the comments down below!