Fantastic Beasts 3 hit another major speed bump last Friday when Johnny Depp announced that he had been asked to step down as Gellert Grindelwald. Warner Bros. followed up his revelation by confirming that the Pirates of the Caribbean star would be recast in the role of the main villain and given that it’ll take time to find the right man to replace him, the prequel threequel has been delayed once again.
When the studio pulled it from its previously scheduled release date of November 12th, 2021, they didn’t reveal exactly when it was now projected to be with us, other than saying it was headed for “summer 2022.” Today, however, Variety is reporting that Fantastic Beasts 3‘s new due date is July 15th, 2022.
The Flash movie – starring Fantastic Beasts‘ Ezra Miller – was once supposed to land the same month, but that potential clash was already avoided earlier this fall when the DC flick was pushed back to November of the same year due to the pandemic delaying production. FB3 has obviously been hit by COVID-19, too, but WB seemed confident they could still get it done in time for next fall before Depp’s firing was announced.
Production has actually already been underway since September, we just haven’t heard much about how it’s going. Eddie Redmayne has previously spun the delay as a good thing, though, arguing that it’s allowed writers J.K. Rowling and Steve Kloves to polish the script while director David Yates got more time to develop the film’s visuals. The delay to the release, however, is a different matter. In fact, it’s hard not to think that audiences might be indifferent to the movie when it eventually arrives nearly four years after The Crimes of Grindelwald.Â
Can Fantastic Beasts 3 bounce back from all these issues? Let us know what you think in the usual place down below.
