By Travis Johnson
Those lucky ducks in the US and the UK got a special Fantastic Beasts IMAX fan event this morning, packed with new footage and featuring an online Q&A event that revealed all kinds of juicy goodness about the upcoming Harry Potter spin-off. Happily, the rest of the world gets a look at it now, which is nice.
Hit the video to get a better look at the monsters, the politics and, perhaps most impressive, the sumptuous design aesthetic that informs David Yates’ upcoming film – the idea to set this thing in the Jazz Age is a great one, and the aesthetic really pops. Also great is Colin Farrell’s hard-boiled auror, who brings a lot of tough noir flavour to the proceedings.
The big news, of course, is that Potter progenitor JK Rowling announced that they intend to make not one but five Fantastic Beasts movies. That’s a bit of a headspin, and certainly exciting. Now that we’ve stepped away from Hogwarts, the possibilities are endless – could each one be set on a different continent, in a different time, dealing with different monsters and magical traditions? That’s totally wild speculation, but we’d be down for it. We can see it now: “That’s not a wand, this is a wand.”
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them opens on November 17.
