David Heyman on Dumbledore and the Decision to Expand to Five “Fantastic Beasts” Movies

Various cast members have already spoken about their experiences of making Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, and now those in charge are revealing how they felt about the twists and turns in this film. Speaking to Collider, producer David Heyman talked about expanding the Fantastic Beasts franchise and his interest in Dumbledore as a character.

There may have been some cynical responses to the announcement that the Fantastic Beast trilogy was going to be expanding into a five-movie franchise, but Heyman assured readers that the decision came from J.K. Rowling herself.

This is all from her head. So she begins with three films, because she thinks that’s the story she wants to tell, and then as she digs deeper…and she hadn’t written anything when she said three. Then she wrote the first, and as she was writing the second, actually just before then, but as she says we working on the first, she began to realize there was a whole lot more, and she was trying to figure out, ‘how the hell am I going to squeeze this into three?’

And with the revelation in Crimes of Grindelwald that Credence is actually Aurelius Dumbledore, there is certainly a lot to cover in the remaining three films. However, much like the rest of the cast, Heyman revealed that he only found out when he read the first version of the script. On the subject of Credence/Aurelius, Heyman stated that he is most excited about the insight into Dumbledore that this series brings:

Yes, Dumbledore’s introduced in this film, and he’ll become a more significant as we go on. But I think the whole exploration of Dumbledore as not the person who we spent time with in the Harry Potter films…I mean, he is, but it’s how he became who he became. And we always knew he was a puppet master, and he is a little bit here too. Like he did with Harry, he’s been playing Newt a little bit.

He also touched on Dumbledore and Grindelwald’s relationship, about which some fans have been disappointed concerning its representation on the big screen so far:

The fact that he and Grindelwald were so close, that there was a point where he was not unsympathetic to Grindelwald. He loved him, and though we only touch on the love now, again, it will go deeper. It’s where it should be right now. You can’t do everything in one film. But I think, it’s pretty clearly suggested, with ‘we were more than friends.’ We may not see them making out in that film. Which maybe some people want. But you really get a sense there was more there.

Finally, Heyman confirmed that the current plan for the title of the third film would be “Fantastic Beasts, colon, then a title,” although we will have to wait at least a year to find out exactly what it will be. Until that time comes, we’ll sure have fun speculating about the third film and its potential title. How about Fantastic Beasts: Not Another Niffler?

After seeing Crimes of Grindelwald, are you happy about the decision to make five movies? What about Heyman’s views on Dumbledore? And what would you call the third Fantastic Beasts movie?