Filming is finally getting ready to start for Fantastic Beasts 3 and "No-Maj" muggle Jacob Kowalski will be a changed man. Actor Dan Fogler plays Jacob, and he has been through quite a journey from Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them to Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.
In fall 2019, Dan Fogler already previewed one change in his own significant weight loss. He hadn't read a script for Fantastic Beasts 3 at that point, but knew the movie could explain Jacob losing a lot of weight through depression at his heartbreak over losing Queenie (Alison Sudol).
Fantastic Beasts 3 was originally going to film last summer, and that was pushed to late fall and then late winter/early spring 2020. Last we heard, cast members were planning to start production in late February. So here we are.
In between Fantastic Beasts movies, Dan Fogler has been playing Luke on The Walking Dead. Luke has longer shaggier hair than Jacob, plus a beard:
So when Dan Fogler showed off his new haircut on February 25, 2020, it looked like he was ready to bring Jacob back to the big screen:
The Walking Dead doesn't traditionally start filming for new seasons until May, so this haircut may not mean anything for Luke. For Jacob, though, do you think he's going to keep the beard, or is part of "what comes next" for Dan Fogler shaving off that facial hair?
You can see Dan Fogler's weight loss by comparing the top Jacob photo from The Crimes of Grindelwald to the new Instagram post. There are any number of ways for Fantastic Beasts 3 to explain the change -- as well as any other new looks from different characters.
It sounds like Fantastic Beasts 3 will set in the 1930s, which means there should be a slight time jump from the 1926/New York setting of the first movie and the 1927/mostly Paris setting of the second film.
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald ended with Jacob alongside Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) on Team Dumbledore (Jude Law) at Hogwarts, while Jacob's love Queenie chose Team Grindelwald (Johnny Depp) with Credence in Nurmengard.
Speaking of Team Grindelwald, Poppy Corby-Tuech plays Vinda Rosier, Grindelwald's loyal right-hand woman, and the actress also seemed to preview her Rosier return for Fantastic Beasts 3:
Dan Fogler said one reason why Fantastic Beasts 3's filming was delayed is because the cast was told the third movie would be gigantic -- twice the size of the previous two films.
But Fantastic Beasts 3 has largely been a mystery, since J.K. Rowling has been working and re-working on the script for so long. Warner Bros. even revealed Harry Potter movies screenwriter Steve Kloves as her co-writer. That's a big change for the franchise, since she was the sole credited screenwriter for the first two movies. Up to a month ago, some cast members said they still hadn't seen scripts, so there could be plenty of changes from what we all thought might happen next.
This is all building toward the infamous duel between Grindelwald and Dumbledore, which the Harry Potter series already revealed happened in 1945. J.K. Rowling is planning five films for this franchise, so Fantastic Beasts 3 should have two more movies ahead. But first things first, and that means filming for the third movie.
In late 2018, J.K. Rowling made her Twitter header a photo of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in the 1930s, in what was seen as a big clue on what's to come. She also hinted at seeing more of Lally Hicks, a professor at Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the U.S. And we're supposed to see even more of Jude Law's Dumbledore at Hogwarts. (Law recently talked about the info-dump he got from J.K. Rowling on all of Albus' backstory.)
Fantastic Beasts 3 is currently expected to be released in theaters on November 12, 2021. Here's more of what we know so far about the movie.
