Fantastic Beasts

Every year, Forbes releases rankings of the highest-paid and highest-grossing actors around the world, but their most interesting list comes a little later in the year when the publication unveils their annual rundown of the most overpaid actors in Hollywood. Unsurprisingly, Johnny Depp’s name tops the list for the second year in a row — and yet, sadistic Hollywood executives just keep right on putting him and his big dumb hats in big budget blockbusters.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them has been releasing so many clips lately that you can almost watch the entire movie before its premiere without leaving your computer. Most of them have included information we already know or serve to introduce us to some of the beasts we’ll meet, but one of the new ones released today touches on a very important detail: the dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald.

How do you make a successful Harry Potter prequel without Harry Potter? J.K. Rowling’s new spinoff, Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, travels back nearly 70 years to 1926 before the events of the first Potter movie to tell a whole new story in a new setting with (almost) all new characters. Reviving the magical universe from the second biggest franchise of all time is a pretty risky move, but Fantastic Beasts does a good job of blending the familiar with the new.

The rumors are true: not only will Johnny Depp have a role in the upcoming Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, as well as being cast in the sequel, the mystery character he’s playing is none other than Gellert Grindelwald, Albus Dumbledore’s friend/crush-turned-sworn-enemy back when both wizards were young and full of ambition.

No scandal can keep an actor down for long, as is the case with Johnny Depp, who has signed on to co-star in the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them sequel (which will be the second in the five-film franchise). But that’s not all — apparently, he also has a very small role in the first installment, coming out this November.

Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory may be a world of pure imagination where the sky is the limit and anything is possible, but it’s hard to say the same about major studios, which keep returning to the same well of established franchises (including board games and toys) to cash-in on name recognition — why risk millions on an original, inventive idea when they can just repurpose a tried-and-true classic? Such is the case with good ol’ Willy Wonka, who is returning to the big screen in a new prequel film from the producer of the Harry Potter series.

Thursday brought some big news for Harry Potter fans, namely that a five new movies are on the way. During a Global Fan Event for ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them,’ J.K. Rowling announced that the Harry Potter prequel spinoff will be followed by four sequels, and that she’s already completed the script for the second film. The event featured a live-streamed panel with the movie’s cast, then afterwards showed the audience an exclusive sneak peek of the new movie.

Much of the appeal of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter website Pottermore lies in the extra bits the site dishes out from time to time, often from Rowling herself, as she expands on the Wizarding World’s universe. To prepare us all for the imminent Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, she’s published a few short histories of magic in America, where the film takes place. Today, she came out with another about the formation of MACUSA, the governing body of magic in the U.S., and how it fits in with American history as we know it.

We’ve seen a handful of teasers and glimpses at Harry Potter spinoff Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them already, but the first full trailer has arrived and it’s the most magical one yet, literally. J.K. Rowling’s spinoff shows us the American wizarding world in the early 1900s as we follow Eddie Redmayne’s Newt Scamander, a British magizoologist who travels to New York City with a suitcase fu

One of the major truths of the entertainment industry is that there will never be a more interesting movie than the one you haven’t yet made. This weekend, while The Legend of Tarzan director David Yates was gently trying to nudge conversations towards his film currently in theaters, people were understandably curious about his upcoming return to Hogwarts, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. And Yates let a particularly interesting piece of information drop.

It’s been several years since Muggles had any major new Harry Potter content to enjoy, but after a brief dry period, J.K. Rowling’s world of magic is on the verge of a major comeback. (And just in time; I was beginning to regret this lightning bolt tattoo I got on my forehead.) Potter himself returns in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, a two-part West End stage play based on a story by Rowling, and the HPCU (that’s “Harry Potter Cinematic Universe,” y’all, c’mon) returns to big screens this fall with Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, a prequel to the main Potter franchises based on another book by Rowling.

J.K. Rowling has affected a lot of lives over the years with her inspirational words, but her recent letter to a courageous fan might be her best work yet.