Mikkelsen has been circling the role for the last few weeks and was reportedly director David Yate’s first choice to replace Depp in the role of the dark wizard Gilbert Grindelwald.
The third Fantastic Beasts film was initially supposed to come out in November of 2021, but has been pushed to July, 15 2022, so Mikkelsen has plenty of time to get into character, which given his track record of playing evil characters, shouldn’t be too hard.