Last year we reported that J.K. Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them was being made into a film. Although we had expectations that it would be more than one movie, it wasn’t confirmed, so we were delighted when Kevin Tsujihara, C.E.O. of Warner Bros, told The New York Times earlier this week that it would be a trilogy, specifically ‘Three megamovies’.
For those who haven’t heard of Mr Tsujihara, it is said that he is not what you’d typically expect from a man in such a position; i.e. he isn’t cast from the same mould as Donald Trump. Rather, he is described as ‘nice-guy’ with a ‘calm demeanour’. This gives us a clue as to how Mr Tsujihara was able to persuade J.K. Rowling to expand the Harry Potter movie universe, something many people had written off as an impossibility. Rowling herself confirmed his importance to the project, stating: ‘When I say he made Fantastic Beasts happen, it isn’t P.R.-speak but the literal truth’
For those who haven’t read Fantastic Beasts and How to Find Them or are unsure how the novella will work as an adaption, J.K. Rowling said:
“Warner Bros. came to me ages ago and said they wanted to do something with Fantastic Beasts. I could see the potential in it. I knew something about Newt having written a little something for Comic Relief. I had imagined a little bit of back story for him… So when Warner Bros. came to me and said they wanted to make a film out of the book I had this simultaneous feeling of ‘it has a lot of potential,’ and another feeling of slight panic that ‘I know some things about Newt and I don’t want you to ruin that for me!’ because I knew who he was. So then I went away and sort of dwelt on what I knew about Newt, not intending to write a script but just trying to collect my thoughts so that I could at least give them the backstory I’d imagined, so that their vision was true to what I knew.
“Then I really did have one of those moments that always make you phenomenally excited as a writer; but also that you know is going to end up being a ton of work. I thought, ‘Oh my God, a whole plot’s just descended on me!’ But I wanted to do it as I was really excited about it. I wasn’t really thinking about writing the script myself, I thought, you know, I’ll give them this plot and then – fatally – I sat down and thought ‘I just wonder what it would look like…’ and wrote a rough draft in twelve days!”
…
“It wasn’t a great draft but it did show the shape of how it might look. So that is how it all started… I think they were kind of stunned. I didn’t tell them I had written it in twelve days. I’ve never written a script. It truly wasn’t that I thought I’d be good at it, I just wanted to get the outline of the story down, and that’s obviously given me a lot to work with going forward.”
In terms of the plot, the film is set in New York City sometime around the 1930s. J.K. has been keen to say that this isn’t a prequel or a sequel to ‘Harry Potter’, but an expansion of the wizarding world. So, although the laws and customs of the hidden magical society will be familiar to fans of the Harry Potter series, just about everything else will be completely new. Personally, I’m looking forward to seeing what Warner Bros does in terms of special effects – I imagine anything related to Harry Potter gets use of the ‘unlimited’ credit card and I can’t wait to see the beasts they create for this movie and their roaming around around New York City.
Jennie Ivins