Fantastic Beasts has been placed on hold, director David Yates told podcast Inside Total Film.

“With Beasts for a minute, it’s all just parked,” Yates said.

“We got to the end of [the third film, 2020’s Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore] and we’re all so proud of that movie, and when it went out into the world, we just needed to sort of stop and pause, and take it easy,” he added.

The director also said that it wasn’t Warner Bros. idea to make five Fantastic Beasts films. The original plan was for three films. Yates indicated that it was author J.K. Rowling’s idea. She announced that there would be five films during a press event in 2016 for the first film, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

“The idea that there were going to be five films was a total surprise to most of us. [Rowling] just mentioned it spontaneously, at a press screening once. We were presenting some clips of FB1. We’d all signed up for FB1, very enthusiastically. And Jo, bless her, came on … and said, ‘Oh, by the way, there’s five of them.’ We all looked at each other — because no one had told us there were going to be five. We’d committed to this one. So that was the first we’d heard of it,” Yates stated.

The Hollywood Reporter reached out to the studio and Rowling for comment. Both have not responded as of yet.

Yates hasn’t spoken to Rowling, the studio or producer David Heyman about the film series’ future.

While the first movie was successful, grossing $811 million worldwide, the second, The Crimes of Grindelwald, only grossed $648 million. The third, The Secrets of Dumbledore, was the lowest performing of the three at $404 million.

Fantastic, Beastly trouble

Johnny Depp, Jeanne du Barry

While the decreasing earnings may have been a sign of waning interest, critics also pointed out to the franchise’s identity crisis. The first film focused on the adventures of Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) and the titular fantastic beasts. The second and third pivoted to the war between Dumbledore and Grindelwald, sidelining its supposed star Scamander.

Mads Mikkelsen’s replacement of Johnny Depp as Grindelwald in the wake of the latter’s messy divorce didn’t help the franchise. Neither did Rowling’s polarizing comments regarding the trans community.