Like Middle-earth in the work of J.R.R. Tolkien, the Wizarding World in the novels of J.K. Rowling is a rich one, full of history and adventures for decades beyond simply those featured in the Harry Potter series. The difference is, of course, that Rowling is still alive while movies about them are being made. She can write new books to be filmed, and even write the film scripts herself! Imagine if Tolkien had written the Hobbit screenplays… I can’t; I can’t even imagine that. Luckily, we CAN imagine Rowling writing a script, because she has, and we have the first teaser to prove it!
In the film Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Rowling gives us the story of an English wizard named Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) who travels to New York with a case full of magical creatures.  But when some of them get out, loose amongst the muggles of the world, he has no choice but to find them. This will be our first look at American wizarding, and in this teaser we get our first glimpse of Porpetina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston) and the briefest of looks at Colin Farrell who is playing a character called Graves. That’s mostly it, but it definitely has us excited for next November.
Not unlike Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, which is a history of Middle-earth, the book Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is sort of a travelogue/textbook written by Newt Scamander that Harry Potter reads in school. The idea to make a narrative film about the adventures of that book’s author is pretty genius, as is setting the movie 70 years before the events of Potter. Director David Yates, who helmed the last four films in the series, looks to be making the visuals at once distinct from the other films and definitely of a piece.
What do you think of these first few images of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them? Let us know in the comments below!
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Image: Warner Bros
