LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Actor Johnny Depp said on Friday he is resigning from the “Fantastic Beasts” movie franchise after losing a libel case in Britain against a tabloid that called him a “wife beater.”
Depp, writing on Instagram, said that AT&T Inc’s
Warner Bros said in a statement that Depp “will depart the ‘Fantastic Beasts’ franchise, and that the role of Grindelwald would be recast.
The third film in the spinoff from the “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling recently resumed production and is expected to arrive in movie theaters in 2022, Warner Bros said.
Depp wrote in his Instagram account that he planned to appeal the judgment against him in the London libel trial. “My life and career will not be defined by this moment in time,” he added.
(Reporting by Lisa Richwine in Los Angeles; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
