Last week, Deadline reported that Fantastic Beasts 3 received its long-awaited title. The third installment in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter spinoff set a release date of April 15, Easter weekend next year. Its name: Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore.
Warner Bros moved the movie up from its previous July 15 slot. All event titles from the company will receive purely theatrical releases next year, not day-and-date on HBO Max.
Reportedly, Easter weekend is always a successful period for Warner Bros. Some notable box office debuts include Batman v. Superman, Clash of the Titans, Ready Player One, and most recently, Godzilla v. Kong.
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore is slated to go up against DreamWorks Animation’s The Bad Guys from Universal on Easter weekend, including Paramount’s Sandra Bullock-Channing Tatum adventure film The Lost City of D.
David Yates will direct The Secrets of Dumbledore, returning from the previous two movies.
Together, the Fantastic Beasts movies grossed $1.46 billion worldwide. Along with the $7.7 billion made by the Harry Potter franchise, the Wizarding Universe racks up close to $9.2 billion at the global box office.
Eddie Redmayne plays magizoologist Newt Scamander in the Fantastic Beasts franchise. Scamander is a collector and tamer of mystical beasts who makes his way through the secret wizard communities of New York, Paris, and London during the late 1920s. Katherine Waterston, Alison Sudol, Ezra Miller, and Dan Folger have also starred in the movies.
Johnny Depp will not return as villain Grindelwald in the upcoming movie. The part was recast with Mads Mikkelsen. Stay tuned for more news on The Secrets of Dumbledore.