Well this is kind of disappointing: for fans who were excited to see director Alfonso Cuaron return to the 'Harry Potter' universe to direct the spinoff film 'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,' you're out of luck. Turns out that the director will not be returning to the wonderful world of J.K. Rowling after all.

According to Digital Spy, the 'Gravity' director recently sat down for an interview where he expressed a desire to take a break from working with an abundance of digital effects. And while he says that directing 'Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban' was a "beautiful experience," he won't be going back to the Potter-verse anytime soon:

I have a lot of love for that universe and I tremendously admire JK Rowling, but today, for the present, projects based around lots of visual effects don’t attract me. I’m coming out of a five-year process of doing visual effects and now I sort of want to clean my palate of that a little bit.

Cuaron's work on 'Prisoner of Azkaban' helped steer the aesthetic and tone of the 'Potter' franchise, and the notion of him returning for 'Fantastic Beasts' was an exciting one, so we have to say we're a little disappointed.

But Cuaron is keeping busy -- according to Variety, while at Cannes last week, the director spoke with buyers about his upcoming project, 'Forsaken,' a chase thriller directed by his son Jonas Cuaron and starring Gael Garcia Bernal. The elder Cuaron is producing that film and helped work on the script.

It was also rumored last week that Alfonso Cuaron has been offered another film from Warner Bros., the studio behind 'Fantastic Beasts' and the 'Potter' franchise: 'The Overlook Hotel,' a prequel to Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining,' based on the Stephen King novel of the same name. And that might not be a film that's driven heavily by visual effects. Whatever the case, we look forward to what Cuaron does next.

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