“Johnny Depp will depart the Fantastic Beasts franchise. We thank Johnny for his work on the films to date,” Warner Bros. said in a statement (via Variety). “Fantastic Beasts 3 is currently in production, and the role of Gellert Grindelwald will be recast. The film will debut in theaters worldwide in the summer of 2022.” For some, this forced resignation is a long time coming. Depp’s involvement as Grindelwald in the first Fantastic Beasts film was not only minimal but was impressively kept a secret prior to the release of the film. Prior to the production of the second film in the franchise (the awkwardly titled The Crimes of Grindelwald), however, many fans used Twitter to ask J.K. Rowling to recast the role of Grindelwald following Amber Heard’s accusations of Depp’s physically and emotionally abusive behavior. Rowling adopted a policy of blocking fans who challenged her on the casting and eventually released a short statement via her own website defending the choice to include Depp in the sequel. “Based on our understanding of the circumstances,” Rowling wrote in December 2017, “the filmmakers and I are not only comfortable sticking with our original casting, but genuinely happy to have Johnny playing a major character in the movies.” Apparently, that has since changed. The other other elephant in the room? Ezra Miller, who appears as Credence Barebone in the Fantastic Beasts franchise. Miller made news back in April when a video surfaced in which Miller appears to be choking a woman. The incident took place at a bar in Reykjavik, Iceland. Neither Miller or Warner Bros. has publicly addressed the video, but Miller did appear at the DC Fandome event to promote The Flash for Warner Bros. back in August. Miller is expected to appear in Fantastic Beasts 3. While the timing of Depp’s resignation suggests that Warner Bros. is responding to the U.K. court ruling, the connection between WB asking Depp to resign and a court ruling that it is not inaccurate to describe Depp as “a wife-beater” has not been made explicit. That being said, the move is a relatively surprising one for the major Hollywood studio, which is part of a larger industry that routinely ignores major ethical concerns around some of its highest-paid directors, executives, and stars. Could the forced departure of Depp be a precedent-setting example of things to come or is it just a fluke in the Hollywood tale of profit over people?
