A new look at Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore has just been conjured up, and this fairly lengthy trailer appears to hit all the right notes for loyal Harry Potter fans. But arguably what is most exciting about this three-minute long preview is what’s not included, namely the distinctive lack of fantastic beasts.
The trailer features plenty of call backs to the original Harry Potter series (even opening with archive footage of Michael Gambon as Albus Dumbledore) not to mention plenty of impressive looking spell-casting, but unlike the film’s first trailer there is a very noticeable lack of magical creatures in this one.
There is still footage showcasing Pickett the Bowtruckle and a very cute niffler, plus a majestic looking phoenix (presumably Dumbledore’s pet Fawkes) closes out the trailer, but otherwise the focus is placed squarely on the human characters. This is no bad thing, as the split focus between fantastic beasts and the larger wizarding war was a common criticism of this film’s predecessor Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.
This trailer could indicate that the balance in this threequel will be tipped in favor of the humans of the wizarding world, rather than its animal inhabitants. Of course, as noted, the first trailer did more heavily feature fantastic beasts, so there is a possibility that this trailer is just smartly edited to highlight Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) and pals in an effort to appease skeptical audience members.
The Secrets of Dumbledore is the third film in the Fantastic Beasts film series will see magizoologist Newt Scamander team up with a younger Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law) in order to stand against the dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald (Mads Mikkelsen) and his army of loyal followers. As this trailer, and just about every piece of marketing material has suggested, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry will feature prominently.
The film will see Mikkelsen replace Johnny Depp, who played Grindelwald in the franchise’s previous two installments. This isn’t the only notable change in this third outing. Original Harry Potter author and highly controversial public figure, J.K. Rowling, has been taken off sole screenwriting duties, and has instead co-written The Secrets of Dumbledore alongside Steve Kloves who adapted all but one of the original Harry Potter books into movies.
Otherwise the film will see plenty of returning faces with Ezra Miller, Dan Fogler, Alison Sudol, Callum Turner, and Katherine Waterston all reprising their roles, not to mention David Yates is once again behind the camera— this will be his seventh directional effort in the Harry Potter franchise.
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore is scheduled to hit theaters on April 8, 2022, but in the meantime you can watch the HBO Max Harry Potter reunion special now or why not revisit the original Harry Potter movies?
You’ll find the entire collection on both HBO Max ($9.99 and up) and Peacock (which has both free and paid tiers).