Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Entertainment
  3. News

'Fantastic Beasts' sequel has found its young Dumbledore — and it's a veteran actor

Rick Marshall
By

jude law dumbledore fantastic beasts 2
Denis Makarenko / Shutterstock.com
One of the Harry Potter franchise’s most popular characters is returning to the big screen.

Warner Bros. Pictures has announced that two-time Academy Award nominee Jude Law will play Albus Dumbledore in the upcoming sequel to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. The film will explore the character’s early years as a professor at Hogwarts School For Witchcraft and Wizardry, before he became the school’s headmaster.

Recommended Videos

The announcement was made by Toby Emmerich, president and chief content officer at Warner Bros. Pictures, who said the studio was “thrilled” to have Law — who has a long history with the studio — take on the role.

Related

“Jude has been a member of the Warner Bros. family for years, and we’re excited to embark on this new adventure with him,” said Emmerich.

Previously, Dumbledore was played by veteran British actor Richard Harris in the first two films of the Harry Potter franchise and then, after Harris’ death, by fellow stage and screen veteran Michael Gambon. Reign actor Toby Regbo also portrayed the young Dumbledore in a brief scene in 2010’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1.

Set to be directed Fantastic Beasts filmmaker David Yates — who also directed multiple installments of the original Harry Potter franchise — the upcoming sequel will be set during Dumbledore’s time as the “Transfiguration” professor at Hogwarts. Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling once again provides the script for the film after making her screenwriting debut with Fantastic Beasts, and the film is expected to chronicle Dumbledore’s relationship with Gellert Grindelwald, the dark wizard portrayed by Johnny Depp in Fantastic Beasts.

Academy Award winner Eddie Redmayne will reprise his role as Newt Scamander for the still-untitled sequel, which continues a story set decades before the events of the Harry Potter films.

Currently starring in the HBO series The Young Pope, Law earned Oscar nominations for his performances in 1999’s The Talented Mr. Ripley and 2003’s Cold Mountain. He’ll appear later this year in Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword.

The sequel to Fantastic Beasts is expected to begin filming this summer, and is currently scheduled to hit theaters November 16, 2018.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Rick Marshall
Rick Marshall
Former Digital Trends Contributor
A veteran journalist with more than two decades of experience covering local and national news, arts and entertainment, and…
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore trailer sends the wizards to war
The cast of Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore.

There's a war coming to the wizarding world, and Albus Dumbledore has been forced to the sidelines while the dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald assembles his forces. However, the first trailer for Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore demonstrates that Albus is far from helpless. Thanks to his efforts, an unlikely team of wizards (and one muggle) may be enough to turn the tide against Grindelwald. Their bravery is inspiring, especially in the face of Grindelwald's evil. But he has already arranged a nasty surprise for Dumbledore: A long-lost brother who wants him dead.

Since Johnny Depp was forced to step down from the franchise, this trailer marks the official debut of Hannibal's Mads Mikkelsen as the new Grindelwald. It's unclear if the character's new face is part of the plot or if the audience is supposed to simply accept the recasting without explanation. Regardless, Mikkelsen's Grindelwald is appropriately sinister and powerful in the new footage. He has also convinced Credence Barebone that Albus wants him dead because Credence is actually Aurelius Dumbledore. This information is coming solely from Grindelwald, so we can't actually take what he says at face value. Yet Credence believes it, and it fuels his confrontation with Albus in the trailer.

Read more
Fantastic Beasts 3 now has an official title and 2022 release date
Jude Law and Eddie Redmayne in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.

Nearly three years ago, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, the most recent installment in the Harry Potter prequel film series, left moviegoers with a big cliffhanger. Now, we know when the next sequel will arrive. Warner Bros. has announced that Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore will hit theaters on Friday, April 15, 2022.

Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling is once again collaborating with screenwriter Steve Kloves on the script. David Yates, the director of four Harry Potter films and both of the earlier Fantastic Beasts movies, is also returning to helm The Secrets of Dumbledore.

Read more
How VFX magic conjured the fantastic beasts of ‘Crimes of Grindelwald’
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald Visual Effects VFX

In 2016, Warner Bros. Pictures and writer J.K. Rowling pulled off the impressive feat of kick-starting a new movie franchise set in the same "Wizarding World" as the Harry Potter series. Set decades before the events of the eight-part saga, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them was a critical and commercial hit, earning acclaim for its magic-infused vision of 1920s New York City and the colorful, fictional creatures let loose upon it over the course of the film.

More on Fantastic Beasts

Read more