J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter spinoff, Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, will hit theaters on Nov. 18, 2016, Warner Bros. announced on Tuesday. The movie will kick off what will eventually become a trilogy based on the 54-page book, which originally came out in 2001. The book itself essentially details the magical creatures in the Harry Potter universe, and is set about seven decades before the start of the Harry Potter storyline; in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Fantastic Beasts is actually a book owned by Harry Potter and written by magizoologist Newt Scamander.
As Rowling has said before, the book isn’t so much a prequel to any of the Harry Potter books, but an extension of the universe. This far ahead of the movie’s release, no casting is yet attached to the project nor are there any directors involved. What’s clear, however, is that Warner Bros. wants to stretch the Harry Potter lore as far as possible by creating three “megamovies,” similar to the approach used for The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. It’s unclear when the other two movies will hit theaters, but we imagine they’ll follow an annual release cycle.
Source: Variety