Oh, you thought you were free of the wizarding world of Harry Potter? Ho ho! Not so fast, my friend. The long-marinating prequel, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, will arrive next fall. Accio, franchise!
Fantastic Beasts (a title that we’ll shorten, rather than acronym as FBAWTFT, because the latter looks like an unpleasant mouth noise), follows the presumed misadventures of a young wizard named Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne), who in the 1920s has traveled to New York accompanied by a suitcase filled with the titular beasts. A few of them, we learn from a witch named Porpentina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston) have escaped.
That’s really as much as we get from the two-minute trailer in terms of plot, though one might assume that a madcap race to recapture the beasts ensues. What’s most impressive may be just how Harry Potteresque this world feels, despite being set several decades in the past, with no overlapping characters to speak of. And with a script penned by Rowling herself, it should be tonally right at home with the main canon.
If it is, and more importantly if it finds box office success, expect no shortage of Harry Potter spinoffs in the future. If so, a few recommendations for the producers:
Grangers on a Train
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Snape *But Were Afraid to Ask
Young Hagrid Gets the Blues
Herbie: The Love Muggle
Voldemortdecai
Some Like It Gringotts
Diagon With the Wind
Dumb and Dumbledore
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them opens next year on November 18th.
Pause at: :31 for a glimpse at the Magical Congress of the United States of America. 1:22 for some solid wand technique.
Essential quote: "Just a smidge."
