Harry Potter fans have nearly a year to wait for the chance to revisit the cinematic version of J.K. Rowling’s magical world. Today, as promised, Warner Bros. has offered us our first video glimpse at the anticipated prequel about a magizoologist and his unplanned adventure in New York City in the 1920s. Check it out the announcement trailer below…
This is exactly what we needed. Did anyone else experience a thrill of excitement when those familiar notes of the Harry Potter score played?
As mentioned, we have the better part of a year to go before this movie arrives in theaters, so a full trailer revealing beasts and brimming with spells and plot details may be a bit premature. Instead, what we got was just a tease of what’s to come, and a bit of a throwback to the Harry Potter films at the same time.
The video begins with voice whispering "lumos maxima," forcing us to flash back to the start of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. The spell sparks into what almost looks like a patronus (equally fitting, as the spell was introduced in Prisoner of Azkaban) and then we see Katherine Waterston’s character standing in front of an audience, and a woman with a very large crown (note the MACUSA emblem behind her).
From her tone and the way she’s standing in front of all of those people, it sounds like she’s confessing something…
Yesterday, a wizard entered New York with a case. A case full of magical creatures, and unfortunately some have escaped.
We get a glimpse of Eddie Redmayne’s Newt walking with his case (assuming that's his hand, it could be Waterston's), and the sight of a building that looks blown apart with a very dapper looking gent standing inside.
Is that Colin Farrell?
From there, we see Newt sitting on a bed. He opens the case on his lap to the sound of a roar. Waterston’s character is standing in the doorway…
"It was opened?" she asks.
"Just a smidge," he responds.
It ends with Waterston’s voice shouting, "Mr. Scamander!" and we see Newt cast a spell.
Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them stars Eddie Redmayne as Newt Scamander, a magizoologist who arrives in New York City in 1926 for what’s supposed to be a brief stopover. Things take a wrong turn when some of his magical beasts escape. The story, which J.K. Rowling penned herself, is adapted (loosely) from the Harry Potter bonus book reference guide, Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, and is set in the same magical worked of Harry Potter, though it's decades before the young wizard arrived at Hogwarts. The cast includes Katherine Waterston as Tina, Alison Sudol as Tina’s sister Queen, Dan Fogler as the "No-Maj" character, Jacob, and Ezra Miller as Credence.
Directed by David Yates, based on a screenplay by J.K. Rowling, Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them arrives in theaters November 18, 2016. More on the movie here.
