The official runtime for Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore has been revealed, and it tells us that the incoming third chapter of the Wizarding World prequel saga will be the longest one yet. Due to various delays, both creative and COVID-related, Harry Potter fans have been waiting almost four whole years for this movie to come out, but it’s finally almost here as Fantastic Beasts 3 is set to enter theaters in the U.S. in mid-April.
It hits screens a whole week earlier in the U.K., however, which means that the BBFC (the British Board for Film Classification) has got the scoop on its runtime. According to the organization, Secrets of Dumbledore will clock in at approximately 136 minutes (2 hours and 16 minutes). This continues an odd trend of each successive Fantastic Beasts flick being two minutes lengthier than the last, as 2016’s Where To Find Them was 132 minutes long and 2018’s Crimes of Grindelwald came in at 134 minutes.
In the wider context of the overall Harry Potter franchise, this makes Secrets the eighth-longest installment of the lot, below 2007’s The Order of the Phoenix (138 minutes) but ahead of 2011’s The Deathly Hallows – Part 2. Despite being the big finale, that one is the shortest entry in the saga at just 130 minutes.
We’ll have to see if Secrets will end up using its slightly extended runtime better than Crimes, which was routinely criticized for being overstuffed and juggling way too many subplots and characters. With Harry Potter screenwriter Steve Kloves brought on board to co-write the screenplay with J.K. Rowling, hopefully it can recapture something of the magic that made the HP films work so well. The marketing is certainly trying to convince us that it does, what with the emphasis on Hogwarts and Jude Law’s young Albus Dumbledore.
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore apparates into cinemas on April 15 in the U.S. and April 8 in the U.K.
