Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is becoming one of the most highly anticipated movies of next year. Harry Potter fans know they will have a new look at the world created by J.K. Rowling on the big screen, but it looks like one of the things we thought we knew about Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them isn’t quite right.
During a recent set visit, star Eddie Redmayne talked with Entertainment Weekly, and it turns out he's going to have a team of adventurers helping out his character, Newt Scamander. He said:
The assumption is Newt’s front and center, but it’s a quartet. So that feels like it slightly takes the [pressure] off. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself.
The movie focuses on Newt, a magizoologist wizard, as he searches New York City in 1926 for a group of marauding beasts which were formerly in his possession. That search leads him to three other characters who assist in the dangerous task while fighting off a determined band of foes. The film is based on a textbook that was used by the characters in the Harry Potter series while they studied at Hogwarts. Author J.K. Rowling also wrote the actual textbook and published it in 2001 to satiate those fanatic for anything related to her famed kids-save-the-world series.
Joining Newt on his adventure are Porpentina "Tina" Goldstein (Katherine Waterston), a determined employee at the Magical Congress of the United States of America (MACUSA) who’s been sentenced to complete tasks beneath her talents after taking the side of the wrong person, and she wants to always fight for the right side. Her younger sister and roommate, Queenie Goldstein (Alison Sudol), is a good-natured free thinker with the ability to telepathically peel back the layers of the mind, discover information, and interpret it correctly. The last of this quartet is Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler), a would be baker who works in a factory and happens to be the first major character in the Harry Potter world who has no wizarding abilities. Jacob is introduced to the whole idea through his escapades with his new found friends.
Rowling also penned the screenplay for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, the first time she’s ever done so with one of the movies based on her properties. That original book, which was very much a textbook detailing the many rare and endangered beasts Newt found and captured on his journey around the world, has been dramatized for the screen.
This idea of a quartet of protagonists may be different, but it actually fits right in with what we know about the Harry Potter stories. If Harry hadn’t been joined by Hermione and Ron in the fight to stop Voldemort, things might not have turned out quite so well for him. Just like that trio, Newt, Tina, Queenie, and Jacob are sure to have their work cut out for them. Lucky for us, it won’t be too much longer until we can see how things turn out.
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them debuts on November 18, 2016.
