Susannah’s Film Facts: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

If you are at all familiar with J. K. Rowling and her Harry Potter books, you probably already know of the two recently-published books involving the world of Harry Potter, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find them (an encyclopedia on the strange and wonderful variations of creatures in the Wizarding world) and Quidditch Through the Ages (a history on the Wizarding world’s extreme sport). These books are Harry’s Hogwarts school textbooks, but are now available to everyone in the Muggle universe. This is an event big enough to claim a big part in the history of the Wizarding world. The Muggles merely respond: “That’s great, let me borrow it when you’re done,” and then, “Come on. This book has a Thief’s Curse?”

“I would like to take this opportunity to reassure Muggle purchasers that the amusing creatures described hereafter are fictional and cannot hurt you. To wizards, I say merely: Draco dormiens  nunquam titillandus.”  -Albus Dumbledore from the Foreword in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by Newt Scamander

Check out this awesome book review on Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by the Collective Contributor Hannah Heath.

Today I’m excited to share that Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them will be adapted for film! Looks like it might be the first of a fantasy movie trilogy. This is big news for us Potterheads as the last huge Harry Potter movie was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II (and wasn’t that just forever ago?). How they’re going to make a Hogwarts textbook into a successful debut movie? I don’t know; (unfortunately I’m not part of the crew. Yet.) But we do have the wonderful internet for research and I do know that the movie takes place before the book was even written, and it’s common sense that any Warner Bros. movie based on a Harry Potter book by J. K. Rowling will be inevitably fantastic.

This feature film’s story is set in the 1920s, in New York. Starring Eddie Redmayne as Newt Scamander, he arrives in New York and meets the magic people. But the wizards and witches in New York are more denigrated there than in London with less muggles (No-Majs, as termed in the States) to give them a good reason to keep undercover. Newt Scamander, however, has a briefcase full of very odd beasts that escape, putting the Wizarding folk in a tight situation. The movie will thus be apparently about the author (Newt Scamander) before he wrote the book Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (though Muggles say it’s really by J. K. Rowling). The director is David Yates, who also directed the last four Harry Potter movies with Katherine Waterson, Colin Farrell, Samantha Morton, and Ezra Miller as the main cast. Filming is in the U.K. (and New York) so that’s going to be pretty awesome too. Reports say the plot will be a mash-up of Indiana Jones, Ghostbusters, and X-Men. There is no offical trailer yet, but the teaser’s pretty cool. And I found it interesting that Newt Scamander’s eccentric personality and TARDIS-like briefcase could have been Doctor Who-inspired.

Google search was not entirely helpful when I asked it to give me the name of the composer; apparently they must not have picked one yet. But there are lots of people (besides myself) that are hoping for John Williams! But I’m trying not to get too excited, because we don’t know yet. Let’s keep our fingers crossed; John Williams composed the first three Harry Potter movies and created the magical Hedwig’s Theme. Who else could they pick for a comeback Wizarding film?

Release Date: November 18, 2016. 

So that’s it on the movie. Have you read the book yet? What are your hopes for the upcoming film? And, most importantly, what do you think about the new term for Muggles (No-Majs)?

Below is the teaser trailer.

… aaaand a featurette!

S. M. Metzler – Tea with Tumnus