Fantastic Beasts 3: What Went Wrong?

3. Steve Kloves Wasn't Involved From The Beginning

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore Ezra Miller
Warner Bros. Pictures

Those who were disappointed with The Crimes of Grindelwald started partying in the streets when news broke that Steve Kloves - the man who wrote all of the Potter movies, bar Order of the Phoenix - was joining Fantastic Beasts 3 as a co-writer.

The first two instalments were written solely by J.K. Rowling, and though Kloves did produce those movies, getting him involved in the writing process was obviously a massive win considering how brilliantly he adapted the Potter saga.

All this in mind, it's deeply confusing that The Secrets of Dumbledore suffers from some incredibly sloppy writing. With Kloves having previously excelled in adapting the wizarding world for the big screen, how the heck did this happen?!

Well, the answer might lie in the fact that Kloves wasn't onboard as a writer from the very beginning - or so it seems. What we mean by that is that he wasn't revealed to be joining the project until November 2019, even though, a full year earlier, Rowling confirmed she had already completed the third movie's script.

Furthermore, The Secrets of Dumbledore is credited as having a screenplay by J.K. Rowling and Steve Kloves, based on a screenplay by J.K. Rowling.

So basically, Rowling had a script for the third movie when The Crimes of Grindelwald was still in theatres. It seems as though Warner Bros. then got cold feet based on that movie's reception, so they brought in Kloves to work with her - only, they didn't start from scratch, and instead used her existing script as a foundation.

Kloves probably did the best he could, but there was only so much he could do when he wasn't allowed to write this thing from the ground up. If the fourth movie does go ahead, he should be allowed to work his magic - pun intended - and craft a fun, tight, and compelling story from a blank page.

Realistically, Kloves should've been writing the Fantastic Beasts series from the very first movie. Letting Rowling make her screenwriting debut with such expensive blockbusters was clearly not a good move.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for almost nine years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. He has been writing and video editing for 10+ years, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers and uploading them to YouTube (they're admittedly a bit rusty by today's standards). If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order or to tell you about the making of 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks, Danny is the person to ask.