The Fantastic Beasts series hasn't been setting the box office on fire in quite the same way as the Harry Potter movies did before it, but that doesn't mean the series hasn't been making money or that it doesn't have fans looking forward to the next entry. Those fans waiting on an explanation of the bomb dropped at the end of The Crimes of Grindlewald will need to wait a bit longer, as the third entry in the franchise has been given an official release date of November 12, 2021.
This puts part three a bit behind the anticipated schedule, as the first two films came out two years apart, which would have resulted in Fantastic Beasts 3 coming out in November of 2020, instead, it will come out a full year later.
It was announced a few months ago that Fantastic Beasts 3 would not go into production this summer as previously scheduled, and would instead start filming in the fall. It seems that the quick turnaround between the first two films may be getting the blame for the second film's poorer performance, and it was decided the third film needed more time to prep.
The extra year of time could be for any number of reasons. However, we can be sure that the extra year isn't happening due to any significant retooling of the franchise's planned structure. The announcement of the date posted on Pottermore also confirms that the Fantastic Beasts franchise is still part of a five-film series.
There was some question as to whether or not we would still get all five announced films in the Fantastic Beasts series after the most recent movie, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindlewald, became the lowest grossing movie in the entire Wizarding World franchise. It became the first movie to do less than $200 million domestically and the first to do less than $700 million globally.
Of course, "underperforming" for a Wizarding World movie is a relative term. The movie still did over $650 million globally and was a top 10 grossing movie in 2018. If your movie is doing worse than expected and is still making hundreds of millions of dollars, you've got a good problem on your hands.
Getting a movie that will need extensive post production digital effects done in 12 months or so was clearly deemed too fast, and so the film will have a longer than normal period to do post-production work.
While fans won't want to wait for another movie, the wait is the only negative to letting the next movie have more time. The more time all aspects of the movie have to do their best work, the better it will all be, and even the fans who wish the movie was coming faster will certainly be happier with a better movie, no matter how long it takes.
The biggest issue with the delay for Fantastic Beasts 3 may have nothing to do with it, and much more to do with Ezra Miller's long gestating Flash movie. It likely delays that movie even more, though it's also a Warner Bros. production, so the studio is clearly taking that into account. The fact that we haven';t heard anything about Flash going into production earlier than expected likely means it will be delayed even more.
November 12, 2021 was an empty weekend on the release calendar, and this time frame has largely been good to the Wizarding World movies over the years. There's currently an untitled Marvel movie set for the weekend before, but since we have no idea what Marvel has planned after this year, it's anybody's guess if that movie could cause box office concerns for Fantastic Beasts 3.
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grtindelwald revealed the character played by Ezra Miller to apparently be a lost Dumbledore sibling. How all of ithis is going to fit into the canon established by the Harry Potter movies we can only guess at this point, and fan theories will now have a little extra time to figure everything out.
