Did Warner Bros Just Schedule Two New Harry Potter Movies?
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Today, Warner Bros. took a machine gun to the movie release calendar and shot flags into 11 dates spread over the next six and a half years. Germain has written about the majority of those dates, which are for big DC Comic book superhero movies. I thought it was important to focus on the other two dates, which are both marked as "Untitled WB Event Film". But we think we know what these dates might be — more Harry Potter movies. Lets look closer at the possible Fantastic Beasts movies after the jump.
Here's the full list:
As you can see, the two Untitled WB Event Films are scheduled for November 16, 2018 and November 20, 2020. The big thing to notice is that both dates fall in November on the same week that the Harry Potter spin-off film Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is set to debut in 2016.
When the project was first announced in September, Warner Bros. said that it was "planned as the first picture in a new film series." In March, a report from The New York Times claimed that Warner Bros. wanted to turn the book into a trilogy of "megamovies." Remember, Warner Bros. is the same studio that split Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows into two movies. They're also the ones who release an adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's 300-page novel The Hobbit as three feature-length movies.
So could the new 2018 and 2020 release date be for the follow-up Fantastic Beasts movies? We think so. The two-year gap between release dates is a longer period than we would expect, considering they released the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films a year apart. (But those trilogies were filmed simultaneously, and even then, they had trouble getting the visual effects completed in time.)
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is inspired by a textbook used by Hogwarts students within the Harry Potter universe. Newt Scamander is the book's (fictional) author. In 2001, Rowling turned Fantastic Beasts into a real 54-page volume to benefit the charity Comic Relief. Although the upcoming Fantastic Beasts will be set within the Harry Potter universe, Rowling has described the spinoff film as "neither a prequel nor a sequel" to the adventures of Harry and company. The story will unfold in New York City seven decades before Harry came into the universe. So its unlikely that Daniel Radcliffe will have a cameo, even if he's willing to consider one.
It was originally rumored that Oscar-winning director Alfonso Cuarón might direct the 2016 Harry Potter spin-off but it's probably not going to happen unfortunately.
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them will be released in theaters on November 18th, 2016.