Fantastic Beasts franchise

The Fantastic Beasts franchise is a film series based on author J.K. Rowling’s 2001 book Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them. The book and film series alike are an offshoot of Rowling’s popular Harry Potter franchise. The Fantastic Beasts film series, which follows the adventures of “magizoologist” Newt Scamander and explores the origins of the Harry Potter universe’s Wizarding World, began with the release of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them in 2016. It subsequently continued with Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018) and Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022). The films star actor Eddie Redmayne as Scamander and Jude Law as a younger version of Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore. Despite the popularity of the wider Harry Potter franchise, the Fantastic Beasts series has struggled to match its predecessor films’ box office success.

Background

The Fantastic Beasts films essentially serve as prequels to the Harry Potter series. The original Harry Potter franchise was a popular series of books and films set in a magical world of wizards that secretly exists in parallel with the real world. Created by British author Rowling, the world of Harry Potter was first introduced in her 1997 debut young adult novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. In that book, eleven-year-old orphan Harry Potter finds out that his parents were a witch and wizard who were murdered by an evil sorcerer named Lord Voldemort. Learning that he is also a wizard, Harry receives an invitation to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. There he meets Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, a pair of classmates and friends with whom he eventually takes the lead in the fight against Voldemort. The Harry Potter book series continued with six more volumes, including Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (1998), Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban(1999), Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire(2000), Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix(2003), Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince(2005), and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007). An eighth story in the form of a play called Harry Potter and the Cursed Child followed in 2016.

The Harry Potter books were a huge hit with young readers and quickly drew the attention of Hollywood producers. Eventually, Rowling inked a deal to bring Harry Potter to the silver screen with a 2001 film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone—marketed in the United States as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone—starring Daniel Radcliffe as Potter, Rupert Grint as Ron, and Emma Watson as Hermione. When it proved to be just as popular as the book it was based on, the initial Harry Potter movie morphed into an entire series that ultimately saw all of the Potter books translated for the screen. In the years after the final Harry Potter film hit theaters in 2011, producers began looking for another way to keep the Wizarding World alive at the movies.

Overview

In the original Harry Potter stories, the students at Hogwarts attend a variety of classes designed to prepare them for their lives as witches and wizards, including the Care of Magical Creatures class. In this particular class, the students use a textbook said to have been written by magizoologist Newt Scamander called Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them. As part of an effort to further expand the Wizarding World for Harry Potter fans, Rowling produced a full facsimile of this textbook under the same name in 2001. Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them included an alphabetical listing of all the magical beasts within the Wizarding World and a detailed description of each one. She also included a forward written by Dumbledore, several chapters on other related topics, and more.

Although Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them has no narrative story, it provided a potentially fruitful opportunity to expand the Wizarding World film franchise. Using the book and its fictitious author as inspiration, Rowling wrote a screenplay that became the basis for a new film, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016). Set in 1926, the story sees Scamander travel to New York City as he is finishing up his exhaustive trek to study and rescue magical creatures from around the world. As he makes his arrival, the city is in the midst of a crisis. With a mysterious creature wreaking havoc across New York, the local wizarding community finds itself at growing risk of being exposed by No-Majs—the American term for Muggles, or non-magical people—who seek to destroy it. When a friendly No-Maj baker named Jacob accidentally lets loose some of Scamander’s magical creatures, they and their allies must scramble to round up all the lost creatures while the spectre of war between the wizards and No-Majs looms in the horizon.

The sequel film Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald followed in 2018. Gellert Grindelwald, a dark wizard captured at the end of the first film, escapes custody and begins working on his plan to ensure the dominance of pure-blood wizards over all other beings. In response, Scamander and Dumbledore team up to ensure to ensure that the evil Grindelwald and his army of followers do not succeed in taking over the Wizarding World. The third film, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022), continued the saga and covered the next chapter in Dumbledore and Scamander’s fight against Grindelwald.

Around the time the first Fantastic Beasts film was released in 2016, it was announced that there would be a total of five films in the series. Questionable box office returns and a number of controversies that swirled around the franchise made it unclear whether the series would continue beyond the third film. One of these controversies involved the legal issues tied to the messy divorce of actor Johnny Depp, who originally played Grindelwald before being replaced by Mads Mikkelsen. However, at the heart of the matter is that apart from the first film, the sequels were panned by critics, receiving “rotten” scores below 50 percent on the aggerate film review website Rotten Tomatoes. In 2023 it was announced that the films were on hiatus, though Warner Brothers did not officially cancel the series. Lead actor Redmayne hinted that fans had probably seen the last of the series and the Warner Brothers shifted its attention to creating a new reboot television series. The continuation of the series remains up in the air.

Bibliography

Berman, Matt. “Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them.” Common Sense Media, 2022, www.commonsensemedia.org/book-reviews/fantastic-beasts-where-to-find-them. Accessed 4 Jan. 2025.

Coggan, Devan. “Fantastic Beasts May Be the Most Cursed Franchise in Hollywood.” Entertainment Weekly, 15 Apr. 2022, ew.com/movies/fantastic-beasts-all-the-controversies. Accessed 4 Jan. 2025.

“Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.” Wizarding World, 2022, www.wizardingworld.com/discover/films/fantastic-beasts-and-where-to-find-them. Accessed 4 Jan. 2025.

Jennings, Collier. “The Fantastic Beasts Franchise Is Too Interested in Dumbledore – and That’s a Fatal Flaw.” Collider, 19 Apr. 2022, collider.com/fantastic-beasts-franchise-dumbledore-fatal-flaw. Accessed 4 Jan. 2025.

Laman, Douglas. “The Untold Truth of the Fantastic Beasts Series.” Looper, 14 Apr. 2022, www.looper.com/832421/the-untold-truth-of-the-fantastic-beasts-series. Accessed 4 Jan. 2025.

Lowry, Brian. “Fantastic Beasts Turns The Secrets of Dumbledore Into Too Much of a Snore.” CNN, 15 Apr. 2022, www.cnn.com/2022/04/15/entertainment/fantastic-beasts-secrets-of-dumbledore-review/index.html. Accessed 4 Jan. 2025.

Murphy, Chris. “The Fantastic Beasts Franchise is ‘Taking a Pause.’” Vanity Fair, 27 Oct. 2023, www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2023/10/the-fantastic-beasts-franchise-is-taking-a-pause#:~:text=According%20to%20director%20David%20Yates,parked%E2%80%9D%20for%20the%20time%20being.&text=J.K.%20Rowling's%20Fantastic%20Beasts%20franchise,most%20detailed%20protocols%20in%20place.%E2%80%9D. Accessed 4 Jan. 2025.

Rubin, Rebecca. “Fantastic Beasts: How Scandal and Controversy Have Derailed the Wizarding Franchise.” Variety, 12 Apr. 2022, variety.com/2022/film/news/fantastic-beasts-franchise-controversies-harry-potter-jk-rowling-johnny-depp-1235226541. Accessed 4 Jan. 2025.

West, Amy. “Fantastic Beasts 3 Ending Explained – Your Biggest Questions Answered.” Games Radar, 14 Apr. 2022, www.gamesradar.com/fantastic-beasts-3-ending-explained. Accessed 4 Jan. 2025.