Rumored to be at the top of a casting list earlier this month, then seemingly dismissed by the actor himself last week who played down the reports, Warner Bros. Pictures has now finally confirmed that Mads Mikkelsen has been cast as the Dark Wizard himself Gellert Grindelwald in the third “Fantastic Beasts” movie.
Deadline, which broke the original casting story, got the confirmation from the studio today. Mikkelsen had been the top choice to replace Johnny Depp, who had played the role in the first two installments but exited after losing a major libel suit in the UK.
The film recently moved its original November 12th 2021 release date to summer 2022 and actors like Eddie Redmayne and Jude Law are already shooting their scenes for the film at Warner Bros Studios Leavesden.
The former “Hannibal” star also spoke today with Indiewire about the potential for that show’s resurrection and where he’d like to go with it should the series be renewed for a fourth season:
“I don’t think it’s a secret that if it does happen, we would love to go into ‘Silence of the Lambs’. That’s always been an issue because they didn’t have the rights for that book. But that’s obviously the most famous part and we’d love to go in there. We’d obviously switch it around a little and do all kinds of crazy stuff with it. That story is so interesting and the characters in it are as interesting. We’d switch around the genders and maybe even put two characters into one. We would love to find someone to play Buffalo Bill. That’s going to be tough.”
Unfortunately MGM still holds the rights to the “Silence of the Lambs” story and has recently passed on giving them to “Hannibal” in favor of CBS’ upcoming series “Clarice” which serves as a sequel to ‘Silence’.