It wasn’t long after Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows: Part 2 hit theaters that plans already began for something else. The Wizarding World couldn’t stay dormant, there were too many opportunities for new stories to be told, and a lot of money left on the table after the 8th film brought in $1.3 billion at the global box office. Soon the world will get that follow-up with Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and the film has been cooking for quite some time too, so long in fact that it was one of the first ideas after “Deathly Hallows.”
Speaking with us on the set of the film, producer David Heyman (the man whose enthusiasm for her books convinced J.K. Rowling to sell the film rights to the Harry Potter series) told us about the initial idea for Fantastic Beasts and how it became the upcoming film instead.
“After we finished the films, there was an excitement about embarking on new challenges and also a deep melancholy… Lionel Wigram (Potter producer) was thinking about what we could do and he had the idea of maybe doing a documentary about Newt. But ultimately I think Jo got word of that and sort of notion as, we wouldn’t have done it without Jo’s permission or also not sure we could’ve.
“So, Lionel had this idea. Jo got wind of it. She said, ‘Well, funny enough I’d been thinking about something already,’ and she had this whole idea in some form. I mean, it’s changed and developed over the course of the year and a half and two years that’s been going on. But she knows how each part connects with her universe. She knows the history of magic before we were with Newt Scamander. She knows the history of the school where Queenie and Tina may have gone – I mean she has all this in her head. She knows creatures – their history, where they’re from and on. She knows who Newt’s family is, she knows Queenie and Tina’s family, she has it all figured out in some way.”
Directed by David Yates, Fantatic Beasts and Where to Find Them stars Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Dan Fogler, Ezra Miller, and Colin Farrell. It will debut in theaters on November 18.
