When it comes to Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts franchise filmmaker David Yates returning to the Max TV series, he tells Deadline, “Never say never.”
Yates was at our TIFF studio talking up his new Netflix movie, Pain Hustlers, starring Chris Evans and Emily Blunt, which made its world premiere at the fest.
Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav confirmed that Max was making a Harry Potter TV series back in April at the streamer’s press day, one which would revisit the iconic books over the course of a decade-long series. When the series was made official earlier this spring, a search for a showrunner was underway in addition to a fresh-face cast. J.K. Rowling and longtime confederates Neil Blair and Ruth Kenley-Letts are exec producing. David Heyman, who developed the films, was in talks to do the same. Rowling’s Brontë Film and TV is producing with Warner Bros. Television.
“I started on Potter in 2005, so it’s been an amazing journey,” Yates says.
Out of the eight films based on the seven books, Yates directed the last four movies, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007), Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009) and Deathly Hallows Part One and Two (2010 and 2011). In addition, Yates took on the Potter spinoff Fantastic Beasts trilogy. In sum, you could say Yates knows something about Potter: In the $9.7 billion franchise that spans both Potter and Fantastic Beasts, his movies rep 63% of that franchise global box office total or $6.07 billion.
“We made the last one, Secrets of Dumbledore, through the pandemic, pre-vaccine, so we were just shooting that movie without vaccines,” he explains, “It was a tough old ride to get it together.”
“Huge affection and a lovely group of people I worked with,” Yates says, “But we haven’t had a conversation since we finished it.”
“It’s been about ‘Let’s just park it, and be done for a while.’” he said.
“I’m excited about moving on, I loved making Pain Hustlers,” he said.
“I have other projects on my desk, which are a million miles away from wizards and involved all sorts of things which are non-wizard associated.”
Pain Hustlers, based on Evan Hughes book The Hard Sell: Crime and Punishment at an Opioid Start-Up, follows Liza, who dreams of a better life for her and her daughter. She gets a job at a bankrupt pharmacy and her guts catapult the company and her into the high life not knowing that she will soon be in the middle of a criminal conspiracy.
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