Fantastic Beasts 3 officially casts Mads Mikkelsen as Johnny Depp's replacement for the role of Gellert Grindelwald. In 2016, Warner Bros. revived J.K. Rowling's Wizarding World on the big screen with Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, a prequel film based on a Hogwarts textbook.

Though the series initially looked like it would focus on the adventures of magizoologist Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne), it soon became apparent Fantastic Beasts would cover the time when dark wizard Grindelwald terrorized the wizarding world.

Depp appeared at the tail end of the first Fantastic Beasts as Grindelwald before going on to have a bigger role in 2018's The Crimes of Grindelwald. He was poised to play this role for the entire franchise, but following Depp's loss of a libel case against a newspaper that called him a "wife-beater," Warner Bros. asked the actor to step down.

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Recasting efforts quickly got underway, and early reports suggested Mikkelsen was the frontrunner. Mikkelsen later refuted those claims, but now it's clear he was merely throwing fans off the scent.