Things have been awfully quiet on the Fantastic Beasts 3 front since Warner Bros. rode the inevitable wave of backlash that came with the studio forcing Johnny Depp to resign from his role as Grindelwald after coming out on the losing end of a libel trial opposite a British tabloid.
In 99.9% of cases, fans would be thrilled at the prospect of Mads Mikkelsen playing an evil wizard in a big budget epic, but the Hannibal star faces a seriously difficult uphill battle to win over the doubters, many of whom will almost certainly reject his performance based entirely on the grounds that he’s not Depp.
The controversy has already led to widespread calls for a boycott, too, which is the last thing Fantastic Beasts 3 needs when previous entry The Crimes of Grindelwald fell off a cliff in terms of the critical and commercial performance, gaining an unwanted reputation of being the worst installment in the Wizarding World by far, and that’s without even mentioning the series of online firestorms that creator and writer J.K. Rowling has found herself caught up in.
Cameras started rolling at the end of September after the start of production was delayed several times due to the Coronavirus pandemic, and in a recent interview, leading man Eddie Redmayne offered an update and admitted that it hasn’t worked out very well for him in terms of shooting underwater scenes.
“I can’t tell you anything other than the fact that I think I’ve got some night shoots in Watford, in Leavesden, that we were meant to shoot in the summer in water. But now obviously because of lockdown, and the film shutdown, they were shot in early December. And suddenly you find yourself swimming outdoors in British winter.”
Having been delayed until July 2022, Fantastic Beasts 3 will be the first Wizarding World movie to be released during the summer since Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part II a decade ago. And based on the behind the scenes turmoil, if it earns even half as much as the $1.34 billion pulled in by The Boy Who Lived’s big screen swansong, then the studio will probably take it.
