Warner Bros. is clearly eager to keep the liquid cash flowing from the Harry Potter well, priming the pump by enticing the boy wizard’s creator J.K. Rowling to start adapting spin-off Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them as a potential new trilogy. We said back in March, that no one would rush Rowling towards a release date, but the first film now has one anyway, headed to the US (and potentially here too) on November 18, 2016.
Aside from Rowling and the producers’ involvement, there are no other people attached just yet, though we’d expect the studio to already be meeting potential directors. The film, which will be based on Rowling's universe-expanding tome, will be set in the wizarding world. It will feature creatures and characters - some new, some already familiar to Potter fans - and, promises Rowling, will be "neither a prequel nor a sequel to the Harry Potter series, but an extension of the wizarding world" set 70 years before Harry sets foot in Hogwarts. That puts it somewhere around 1921, when Magizoologist and credited author of the book Newt Scamander would have been about 24 according to in-world chronology.
Cute that they're making a story out of this. I had this wee book and it had little scrawls throughout it as if Harry and Ron had been sharing and doodling throughout it, very cute and funny. Wonder if that'll somehow be incorporated?
