The thing is, it’s closer to Disney greenlighting Rogue One and four sequels to it before the first one has even hit theatres. Fantastic Beasts is a spinoff, and it must be tracking very well for this sort of response, given that they have yet to get actual returns on a Potter movie without Harry Potter.
Presumably if this first movie doesn’t do well, they won’t proceed with all of the remaining ones. One of the studios was going to make movies from all of the Narnia novels, but after the first didn’t do very well, they didn’t proceed. I think another studio made the second movie.
Yes - outside of the situations where they’re filming multiple movies concurrently, what does it really mean that the studio has greenlighted 5 films? How much do they really lose if they wind up cancelling them? I’d suspect (but have no idea) that even if they signed Redmayne and other actors to a 5 picture deal, it’s dependent on the movies hitting certain box office targets.
And even if the contracts force them to make the other four movies, they could still comply by making four no-budget stinkers and releasing them in three theaters each. But of course the actors probably wouldn’t want that either, so they’d have the leverage to renegotiate the contracts.
The Golden Compass was another example of an aborted film series.
Man, I really need to read these thread titles more closely!