Do we really need five full-length Fantastic Beasts movies?

According to producer David Heyman, the Fantastic Beasts franchise will have five films to tell the necessary story. But, do they really need this many films?

Fans of the Harry Potter universe are aware that the Fantastic Beasts franchise is going to have five films in total. Fantastic Beasts 2 The Crimes of Grindelwald, which was released in November, is the second film in the series, so we still got three more to go people.

Seeing as how the Harry Potter franchise was ridiculously successful, it’s easy to see why from a financial standpoint Warner Brothers would make as many movies as possible for Fantastic Beasts. Warner Brothers knows it can keep making money off of these films as Potterheads are such a huge and loyal fanbase.

Yet according to David Heyman, producer for the films, the reasoning for making five movies isn’t all about the dollar signs. In an interview with Collider, Heyman spoke about how the films may look like a cash grab but the main reason behind making five is due to the storyline.

"This is all from [Rowling’s] head. So she begins with three films, because she thinks that’s the story she wants to tell, and then as she digs deeper… and she hadn’t written anything when she said three. Then she wrote the first, and as she was writing the second, actually just before then, but as she says we working on the first, she began to realize there was a whole lot more, and she was trying to figure out, ‘How the hell am I going to squeeze this into three?’"

According to Heyman, J.K. Rowling realized that the story couldn’t really fit into a trilogy while mapping the story out. He explained that she has the story planned out now and knows how the films are going to end.

"I think she knew some of the tentpole, not film tentpole, but some of the structures, the big moments that she was trying to hit. She knows where it ends. She knows where it begins, and she had a lot of the building blocks in her head. But as she was filling out, she realized there was a lot more there than she thought."

These quotes beg the question about if the franchise really does need more storytelling real estate, however. Many reactions to Fantastic Beasts 2: The Crimes of Grindelwald have been less than favorable. Much of the criticism is related to how the story keeps trying to expand and grow bigger. Add to that the division of fans over the casting of Johnny Depp as Grindelwald, and J.K. Rowling’s defense of this casting, and you’ve got a sticky mess no spell could fix.

And while having so many characters and multiple storylines worked for Harry Potter, as it was based on a book and many of the fans were already familiar with these stories and characters, it’s much harder to follow the confusion in Fantastic Beasts. The enjoyable parts of the movies seem to be when the story focuses in instead of trying to draw the scope out.

We’re all for tales of Newt Scamander and his friends saving fantastic creatures. Instead, the Fantastic Beasts franchise is attempting to create a plot that’s similar in size and importance to the Harry Potter series. So far, it doesn’t seem to be that effective.

Are you glad that the Fantastic Beasts franchise will have five films? Or do you think they should have stuck with three? Share your thoughts with us in the comments!