It’s officially, Fantastic Beasts fans, your new Grindelwald is here and his name is Mads Mikkelsen. On Wednesday, Warner Bros. released a press release confirming that the Danish actor would step into the role in the upcoming third film in Harry Potter prequel franchise vacated by Johnny Depp. Earlier this month, Warner Bros. asked Depp to resign from the franchise after he lost a libel case against British Tabloid The Sun, which Depp unsuccessfully sued for referring to him as a “wife beater” in an April 2018 article describing his relationship with ex-wife Amber Heard. Mikkelsen has been circling the role for the last few weeks and was reportedly director David Yate’s first choice to replace Depp in the role of the dark wizard Gilbert Grindelwald. The third Fantastic Beasts film was initially supposed to come out in November of 2021, but has been pushed to July, 15 2022, so Mikkelsen has plenty of time to get into character, which given his track record of playing evil characters, shouldn’t be too hard.
