Warner Bros. was not kidding around when it showed up to this morning’s Time Warner investor meeting with a full slate of upcoming release dates. In addition to revealing a daunting lineup of DC movies set to premiere between 2016 and 2019, Warners doubled—or rather, tripled—down on a couple more of its surefire properties: Harry Potter and The Lego Movie, the former in the form of “at least” a trilogy of movies devoted to J.K. Rowling’s slight spinoff book Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, and the latter in the form of at least three sequels/spinoffs. Both of these franchises have been previously announced—Fantastic Beasts already has a director on board, David Yates, and the previously announced Lego Movie 2, Lego Batman, and Lego Ninjago are all in various stages of development—but Warners committed to its long-term “all franchises, all the time” strategy by slotting these projects into specific dates.
The first Fantastic Beasts—which centers on the adventures of magical animal specialist Newt Scamander, author of the titular magical textbook—was already scheduled for release on November 18, 2016. Today, Warners revealed the two follow-up movies will drop in 2018 and 2020, and hinted at the possibility of more to follow: According to Warners CEO Kevin Tsujihara, “Jo [Rowling] has a vision for this extension of the franchise, and for the first time, she is writing the script for what she believes is at least a trilogy.” Apparently there are a lot of magical beasts out there, and Newt Scamander is going to find every last one, dammit!
On the Lego Movie front, the studio basically confirmed what we already know and/or suspected about the upcoming sequels and spinoffs to Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s massively popular 2014 crowd-pleaser: Lego Batman will move into the date previously slotted for The Lego Movie 2, in 2017, with the proper sequel pushed back to 2018. Charlie Bean’s Ninjago spinoff will beat them both to theaters, though, arriving in 2016. By that point, expect Warner Bros. to have announced at least three more Lego movies and—I’m just speculating here—a six-movie series dedicated to the adventures of Hermione Granger’s cat, Crookshanks, before he arrived at Hogwarts.