‘Fantastic Beasts 2’ will star Johnny Depp as Grindelwald, gay partner of Dumbledore
Johnny Depp as well as director David Yates will both be returning for the sequel to this year’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Yes fans, Depp will make a brief cameo as infamous Dark Wizard Gellert Grindelwald in the new film.
At a fan event in October, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling revealed that she has already written the plots for five films in the Fantastic Beasts franchise.
Yates confirmed in an interview with The Leaky Cauldron that Depp was an ideal fit. Depp’s also set to appear in a cameo role in the first film, which opens next week.
“Johnny Depp is a real artist,” Yates said. “He’s created several characters who have really resonated in our popular culture. He’s a really brilliant, brilliant actor. We were excited about seeing what he would do with this guy, the character. He’s fearless; he’s imaginative; he’s ambitious. We thought he would do something fun and special. So we went for him, purely on that selfish basis. We don’t care if he’s famous or not famous. We just know he’s interesting.”
Games Radar summarized that “Grindelwald is both the villainous counterpart and childhood crush of Albus Dumbledore, another famous Potter personage who was recently confirmed for an appearance in the Fantastic Beasts sequel. Their final duel leading to Grindelwald’s imprisonment occurred in 1945, and Fantastic Beasts takes place in 1926, so we may have to wait a few more movies before we see it on the silver screen. It should be impressive whenever it does happen – Grindelwald was the second most powerful Dark Wizard ever, right after Voldemort.”
Rowling’s full quote about Dumbledore’s sexuality, which reveals that he was in love with Grindelwald, a dark wizard who led Dumbledore down a very dark path early in his life:
My truthful answer to you… I always thought of Dumbledore as gay … Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald, and that that added to his horror when Grindelwald showed himself to be what he was. To an extent, do we say it excused Dumbledore a little more because falling in love can blind us to an extent? But, he met someone as brilliant as he was, and rather like Bellatrix he was very drawn to this brilliant person, and horribly, terribly let down by him. Yeah, that’s how I always saw Dumbledore. In fact, recently I was in a script read through for the sixth film, and they had Dumbledore saying a line to Harry early in the script saying I knew a girl once, whose hair… I had to write a little note in the margin and slide it along to the scriptwriter, “Dumbledore’s gay!” If I’d known it would make you so happy, I would have announced it years ago!
Directed by David Yates and starring Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Colin Farrell, Samantha Morton, Jon Voight, Gemma Chan, Ron Perlman, and Ezra Miller.
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is scheduled to hit UK and US cinemas on November 18, 2016.
