abigalehobbs:

The real reason Dumbledore isn’t shown to be gay in Fantastic Beasts (and why he never will be)

So, I’ve seen a lot of people criticize Crimes of Grindelwald for not explicitly showing Dumbledore to be gay. I’ve also seen a lot of people defending that movie by pointing out that there are still three more movies where Dumbledore could come out. But Dumbledore will not come out in the next movie, or the next one, or the next one. There’s a simple reason:

Money.

Homosexuality is still criminalized in 72 countries. Even in countries where it is technically legal, gay relationships might still be frowned upon and LGBT representation in media might be censored. That’s a minimum of 72 countries where the Fantastic Beasts movies will be banned and where WB will not be able to make money from ticket sales, DVD sales, streaming or merchandise sales.

I couldn’t find a complete list of countries that censors LGBT representation in media but it doesn’t really matter because only one country truly matters.

China.

In 2017, China explicitly banned homosexual content in its TV series. Movies banned in China include Call Me By Your Name and Brokeback Mountain.

Every Hollywood movie wants to be released in China. China is the second most important territory for Hollywood films and the only reason it is not the most important is because the Chinese government takes a sizable percentage of grosses. The Chinese government only allows 34 foreign movies to be released a year and every Hollywood movie is vying for a spot. In 2017, Hollywood movies made $3.26 billion at the Chinese box office. The first Fantastic Beasts movie made $85.9 million at the Chinese box office, or around 10.5% of the movies total worldwide gross.

So that’s a lot of money that Fantastic Beasts will miss out on if the movie gets banned! The first Fantastic Beasts movie had a production budget of $180 million. The second cost $200 million. That’s not including the money spent on marketing the movies, which is also probably around $200 million. To recoup this cost, Warner Bros. will want to distribute the movie to the maximum possible audience. The first Fantastic Beasts movie is estimated to have made a net profit of $164 million. So this money could mean the difference between Fantastic Beasts generating a profit and losing money.

Bottom line, Warner Bros. simply will not risk the possibility of Fantastic Beasts being banned in China and other countries where homosexuality is censored/banned. They stand to lose a lot of money.

Would I like to be proven wrong? Absolutely! But as it stands I would not be getting my hopes up for Grindeldore, or for LGBT representation in big budget Hollywood movies anytime soon.

Disclaimer: I am not a box office expert but most of this is fairly common knowledge and I feel pretty confident in saying this.

(So this isn’t showing up in the tags and I heard that Tumblr blocked external links or something so I’m going to try posting this without the links. If you want to see the sources just go to my blog!)