The math is pretty simple: across eight films, the “Harry Potter” franchise totaled $7.7 billion worldwide, and that’s including however many billions were earned in merchandising. So it only follows that Warner Bros. are going to squeeze every last dollar out of their return to that world with “Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them.”
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During a fan even this afternoon, J.K. Rowling announced that “Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them” would stretch from its originally planned trilogy to a total of five films. That’s all the details right now, but it’s safe to say that Eddie Redmayne will be the constant through all of them, though I’m sure some players in the supporting cast — Katherine Waterston, Alison Sudol, Ezra Miller, Dan Fogler, Colin Farrell, Jenn Murray, Jon Voight, Carmen Ejogo, Gemma Chan and Faith Wood-Blagrove — will recur as well (I’ve never read the source material, so I have zero clue).
The big question is if these films, which take place before the events of the original “Harry Potter” movies, will eventually meet up with them on the timeline. It’s certainly an intriguing notion.
“Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them 2” and “Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them 3” are scheduled to open in 2018 and 2020 respectively, and I would guess that Part 4 and Part 5 will follow in 2022 and 2024. But it will all get started with the first film when it opens next month on November 18th, and Warner Bros. will be keeping their fingers crossed for more box office magic…otherwise, this announcement will be pretty embarrassing if the film underperforms.
There is no source material. The fantastic beasts book is just a mock text book that is used at Hogwarts. Catching up to the Harry Potter timeline would be a seventy year jump, so that seems implausible, but younger versions of characters are certain to appear. (Dumbledore, Grindelwald etc.)