Harry Potter can’t die… he’s the boy who lived, for crying out loud. So it came as little surprise that Warner Bros.’ enormously lucrative fantasy franchise would continue with the spin-off movie Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, based on a fictional non-fiction book within J.K. Rowling’s series of novels. Although it was extra cool to find out that J.K. Rowling was writing the screenplay herself. But now she’s got her work cut out for her: Fantastic Beasts is turning into a motion picture trilogy.
The New York Times has published a profile on Warner Bros. CEO Kevin Tsujihara, and it’s a highly recommended article, outlining Warner Bros.’ aggressive plans to dominate the blockbuster market in the next few years with new Harry Potter, DC Comics and LEGO movies, and by playing hardball with Marvel Studios. The piece claims that a new DC superhero film series “a film series will be announced in the near future,” but goes into no detail beyond speculation that a Justice League movie remains on the studio’s radar.
But the biggest news in the article is about Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. “Three megamovies are planned,” according to The New York Times, but although J.K. Rowling specifies that Kevin Tsujihara is directly responsible for getting her to write the first film’s screenplay, it makes no mention of whether she would write the next two films in the franchise personally. The franchise takes place 70 years before the events of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s/Philosopher’s Stone, and tells the story of Newt Scamander, a “magizoologist” who would one day write one of the textbooks that Harry Potter has to study in order to graduate Hogwarts.
Fantastic Beasts sounds all well and good, but we think Warner Bros. is missing an incredible opportunity to produce a Gilderoy Lockhart franchise based on his “autobiographical” adventures Break with a Banshee, Gadding with Ghouls, Holidays with Hags, Travels with Trolls, Voyages with Vampires, Wanderings with Werewolves and Year with a Yeti. Screw the trilogy mindset, Warner Bros… that’s seven movies right there, and you can always spin-off Magical Me and Gilderoy Lockhart’s Guide to Magical Pests!
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
