Harry Potter director to helm new project in break between Fantastic Beasts 3 and 4

Eddie Redmayne and Katherine Waterston in Fantastic Beasts 2
(Image credit: Warner Bros.)

Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts director David Yates has a new movie in the works, Deadline reports.

Plot details for this new project are being kept under wraps, but, according to Deadline, the movie will be set in the world of pharmaceutical sales and the opioid epidemic and in "the same vein" as The Wolf of Wall Street with a female character at the center. Wells Tower, a writer known for his short stories and non-fiction, is penning the script. 

Yates directed the last four movies in the Harry Potter series – Order of the Phoenix, Half-Blood Prince, Deathly Hallows – Part 1, and Deathly Hallows – Part 2. He also directed 2016's Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, 2018's Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, and the upcoming (and currently untitled) Fantastic Beasts 3. Two more sequels are set to follow, but the new movie is set to be made in a break between the third and fourth installments. Fantastic Beasts 3 has now wrapped filming and it's set for release on July 15, 2022.

Since his feature-length directorial debut in 1998, this will only be Yates' third non-Potter-verse movie. His first movie, The Tichborne Claimant, was a legal drama starring Robert Pugh and Stephen Fry, and in 2016 he directed The Legend of Tarzan, which starred Alexander Skarsgård, Samuel L. Jackson, and Margot Robbie. 

While we wait for Yates' new project to arrive in theaters, check out our list of all the other upcoming movies to get excited about, in 2021 and beyond.

Entertainment Writer

I’m an Entertainment Writer here at 12DOVE, covering everything film and TV-related across the Total Film and SFX sections. I help bring you all the latest news and also the occasional feature too. I’ve previously written for publications like HuffPost and i-D after getting my NCTJ Diploma in Multimedia Journalism. 

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