Magic moment
Eddie Redmayne goes monster hunting in Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them…
Director David Yates Starring Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Dan Fogler, Samantha Morton
ETA 18 November
You don’t want to screw it up,” says Eddie Redmayne, clearly aware that he’s stepping into sizeable wizard shoes with Fantastic Beasts
And Where To Find Them. As Ministry Of Magic employee Newt Scamander, he’s spearheading a new trilogy of films set in the Harry Potter universe, though you shouldn’t expect a certain lightning-scarred hero to make an appearance – this new story is set in 1926 New York, almost 60 years before Harry’s birth.
There are familiar faces behind the camera, though. Potter alum David Yates is directing, having previously helmed the final four
Potter films (“Even though there’s a scale to these films that could be intimidating, he has such a kindness that it feels very intimate,” Redmayne says), and J.K. Rowling herself has written the script, drawing from her 2001 encyclopaedia of the same name.
Though the film was initially planned as a documentary-style trek across the globe, Rowling’s responsible for constructing an entirely new story around her magical menagerie, with Scamander transporting a suitcase-load of creatures to the US, only for them to get loose. He attempts to track them down with a little help from witch Porpentina (Katherine Waterston) and ‘No-Maj’ (AKA muggle) Jacob (Dan Fogler) when he’s confronted with baddie Mary Lou (Samantha Morton), leader of the wizard-hunting New Salem Philanthropic Society. Five years after Harry Potter And The Deathly
Hallows Part 2 enjoyed the sixth highest-grossing opening weekend ever, it seems to be business as usual in the Potterverse. And though expanded universes are all the rage in an increasingly competitive movie market, Fantastic Beasts feels like a fresh and exciting delve into a previously unexplored corner of the mythology.
Pivotally, the trilogy has the approval of Harry Potter himself (“I’m excited to see them, especially with Eddie,” Daniel Radcliffe has said), and Redmayne isn’t taking his responsibility lightly. “The stakes are high because they were so good before,” he says. “I love J.K. Rowling. I love the Harry Potter films [ and] books so, for me, this is just the most wondrous gift, really.”