Photo: Via J.K. Rowling's Facebook.
Huge news just broke across Hollywood and the wizard world alike. Potterphiles, are you sitting down? J.K. Rowling, your reigning Queen and the spiritual light that guides you, just announced on Facebook that she is working on a spin-off movie of the beloved Potter series for Warner Bros. Harry, Ron, Hermione and friends won't be making an appearance. Instead, the story takes place 70 years prior to Harry's birth (so, sometime in the 1920s) in New York City! It centers around a deep-cut character who will already be familiar to super-fans.
Newt Scamander, author of Hagrid's go-to Sunday read Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them will be our new hero. It's well-known that Rowling has laid out much, much more background about the various plot points and characters than ever made the final cut for the books (much less the movies). Apparently, Scamander is a particularly beloved side character. Says Rowling, "I liked him so much that I even married his grandson, Rolf, to one of my favourite characters from the Harry Potter series, Luna Lovegood," she said. This is awesome not only because we're getting more canonical content, but also because we'll hopefully get to explore some of our questions about the series. We've always wondered how wizarding law and culture differs across the globe, and while we got a glimpse of it at the Triwizard Tournament, Rowling confirms that in Fantastic Beasts, "the laws and customs of the hidden magical society will be familiar to anyone who has read the Harry Potter books or seen the films."
Next up: Can we get a movie version of The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore? Please? (USA Today)