Massive big-budget film franchises have become so common nowadays that we can seldom remember a time when we didn’t flock to theaters to watch the next MCU, Fast and Furious, DCEU, or James Bond movie, with so many other successful franchises that a single person would be hard-pressed to remember them all. One such franchise that has grown larger than life over a span of less than three decades is the Wizarding World, created and introduced by J.K. Rowling in 1997 with the first book in the series, and well… the rest is history.

Since the world first met the boy-wizard living under the stairs with a lightning-bolt scar on his forehead, billions of fans have fallen in love with the franchise as the Wizarding World has grown bigger and more adventurous with each passing year. The newest project that will revisit the wonderful world of witches and wizards is Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, set to release in theaters on April 15, 2022, and has magical fans buzzing with anticipation. Though, maybe not as much as they could be. With a character as prolific as Dumbledore, would Warner Bros. have been better off leaving the Fantastic Beasts tag off the title, therefore giving Dumbledore a much-deserved stand-alone feature? Let’s discuss it.

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Where Are the Fantastic Beasts?

     Warner Bros. Pictures

The spinoff franchise Fantastic Beasts was concocted from a book (also written and created by J.K. Rowling) highlighting several key magical creatures in the Wizarding World universe. The first film in the franchise respected and honored that premise relatively well as the plot revolved around Newt Scamander and his many fantastic, beastly friends. The second film got away from the Fantastic Beasts plotline a tad as the primary concern was about stopping Grindewald. Now (based on the trailers for the upcoming third film), the franchise has forgotten about the ‘fantastic beasts’ entirely.

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With two official trailers dropping for The Secrets of Dumbledore with a combined five minutes of footage, less than half a dozen fantastic beasts have been seen, and only for a small handful of seconds. Luckily, Dumbledore’s trusted pet phoenix, Fawkes, makes an appearance. Other than that small cameo, it seems as if the few fantastic beasts that can be seen in the trailers are just there so that the studio could keep the Fantastic Beasts tagline. Hopefully, the magical creatures won’t take another back seat as they did in The Crimes of Grindelwald, but fans will have to wait and see.

A Stand-Alone Film Would Be More Marketable

It’s no secret that the Fantastic Beasts spinoffs haven’t done as well for the Wizarding World franchise as its predecessors, financially or critically. The first Fantastic Beasts film made $811 million at the box office, and The Crimes of Grindelwald did well-worse with a franchise-low $651 million. The only movie from the original eight Harry Potter films with box office numbers as low as those was Prisoner of Azkaban ($789 million), with all seven others out-earning the rest.

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With a character as notable and fan-favored as Dumbledore, it might have been wise to make a stand-alone Dumbledore movie, not attached to the Fantastic Beasts franchise, to draw longtime fans back into the mold. Undoubtedly, based on box office numbers alone, the Wizarding World has lost some fans over the last few years, and a film honoring one of the franchise’s most beloved characters might have been a wise way to win them over. It would’ve allowed the Wizarding World to expand into some new territory while still putting out new/related material, much like how Star Wars released two seasons of The Mandalorian before switching gears and doing The Book of Boba Fett.

It Could Have Been a TV Series

Even if Warner Bros didn’t want to make the film a stand-alone for Dumbledore, they still could have honored his story by giving him his own property, i.e., a TV show. The Wizarding World has fallen behind several other franchises because they haven’t yet made the jump to implementing television series, and this could have been a phenomenal way to start. After all, the history of Dumbledore requires more than just a two-hour movie, and a television show, even a one-season limited series, could have explored that further than a film could.

Even so, it’s still possible that The Secrets of Dumbledore will do justice by the character and gives fans a film they can be happy about. But with the franchise straying so far from its original source material and oversaturating the narrative with prior prolific characters in order to try and draw interest, it’s safe to say that it’s at least debatable whether Warner Bros. should have honored Dumbledore with a stand-alone project rather than cram part of his history into their current spinoff franchise.