Looking at the huge drop in both the critical consensus and box office earnings that greeted The Crimes of Grindelwald, simply slapping something with the Wizarding World branding isn’t enough to guarantee that it’ll replicate the same sort of success as the Harry Potter franchise, with next year’s third installment shaping up to be a definitive moment for the Fantastic Beasts prequels.
Stretching a slim fictional textbook that was originally written to raise money for charity into five full-length blockbuster movies was always a bold and risky strategy, and if the tepid reactions to The Crimes of Grindelwald are any indication of the prequel series’ long-term viability, then the tank is already starting to run out of gas.
Should Fantastic Beasts 3 bomb, Warner Bros. will find themselves in a very precarious situation as to whether they continue with another two fantasy epics that aren’t going to turn much of a profit, or they abandon ship and wind up with egg all over their face. HBO Max are inviting pitches for TV shows set in the Harry Potter universe, though, so it’s not as if the brand is going to drop down the studio’s list of priorities.
In fact, insider Daniel Richtman claims that WB are developing ideas for a Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts crossover where the characters from the two franchises will meet, although the tipster doesn’t offer any sort of explanation as to how it’s intended to happen. The two Wizarding World timelines are separated by almost 70 years, so it’s unclear how the disparate ensembles are supposed to cross paths, especially when the majority of the Fantastic Beasts favorites will either be dead or very old by the time that any of the Potter regulars are even born. So for now, we’ll just have to wait and see what the studio has in mind.
