Mads Mikkelsen Attends Cannes Screening of Johnny Depp's Movie After Replacing Him in 'Fantastic Beasts'

Harry Potter fans are seeing double Grindelwalds at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.

On Tuesday, Mads Mikkelsen attended the opening night of the Cannes Film Festival, where Johnny Depp's French-language film Jeanne Du Barry screened. Mikkelsen walked the red carpet before Depp appeared. The Danish actor stars opposite Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, which premieres at the festival.

Mikkelsen, 57, notably replaced Depp, 59, as villain Gellert Grindelwald in Warner Bros.' Potter spinoff franchise Fantastic Beasts in 2020 after Depp lost a libel lawsuit in the U.K. he brought against newspaper The Sun.

The Danish actor went on to portray Grindelwald in the series' 2022 film Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore.

Depp is embarking on his first film role in three years with Jeanne Du Barry, in which he plays King Louis XV opposite director Maïwenn.

The actor's comeback film arrives overseas one year after his controversial defamation trial with ex-wife Amber Heard over a 2018 op-ed she wrote about coming forward with domestic abuse allegations.

After Depp's defamation trial with Heard, 37, last year, Mikkelsen suggested in an August interview that Depp could conceivably return to Fantastic Beasts while noting that "the course has changed" for the actor.

"Obviously, well, now the course has changed — he won the suit, the court [case] — so let's see if he comes back. He might. I'm a big fan of Johnny," he told Deadline at the time. "I think he's an amazing actor, I think he did a fantastic job."

"Having said that, I could not copy it. There's there was no way I could just copy it, because it's so much him," the actor told the outlet of his own take on the Harry Potter prequel's villain. "It would be creative suicide. So we had to come up with something else, something that was mine, and build a bridge between him and me."

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The Secrets of Dumbledore generated the lowest opening weekend box office for any Harry Potter movie to date upon its release in April 2022. A sequel has not been officially announced yet, though screenwriter and franchise creator J.K. Rowling has previously expressed that she intended on the movie franchise having five total installments.

RELATED VIDEO: Johnny Depp 'Excited' for Comeback, Amber Heard Has 'New Energy' 1 Year After Trial Began: Sources (Exclusive)

More recently, PEOPLE confirmed in April that Warner Bros. Discovery is in talks to produce a new Harry Potter television series that would cover Rowling's original seven books, much like the Warner Bros. movies that starred Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint.

Mikkelsen previously intimated that he never spoke with Depp about playing Grindelwald in the lead-up to The Secrets of Dumbledore's release.

"I didn't have a dog in that fight," he told The Sunday Times back in June 2021. "I don't know what happened [in his private life] and I don't know if it was fair, him losing the job, but I just knew that the show was going on. And I would've loved to have talked to him about it if I had the chance, but I just don't know him in that sense."