Warner Bros. Pictures may have struggled to get fans excited for Justice League, but the studio will have no such problems with upcoming Harry Potter spin-off, which, as of Thursday, finally has a name: Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.
Potter-heads also finally have a time frame how long they'll have to wait for it: exactly one year. The official release date is November 16, 2018. But wait, that's not even the best part. Fans got their very first look at all the characters, old and new in an image/GIF shared by the Fantastic Beasts Twitter.
So, time to dissect. Starting from the left, fans finally get to see Jude Law (Young Pope) continue his youthful brand as a young Albus Dumbledore. In the year of the first Fantastic Beasts (1926), Dumbledore was a Transfiguration professor at Hogwarts, but not yet the Headmaster everyone knows and loves. His beard is getting there!
Next up is Ezra Miller. Miller is returning as Credence Barebone, proving that his transformation into the Obscurus at the end of Fantastic Beasts wasn't fatal after all (duh). Then we see newcomer Claudia Kim (The Dark Tower) as Maledictus, a never-before-seen character described in a press release as "the carrier of a blood curse that destines her ultimately to transform into a beast."
Next to her is Zoë Kravitz (Big Little Lies, Rough Night) as Leta Lestrange, who was only briefly in a photo in the first film. Leta is a member of the extremist pure blood Lestrange family, but whether or not she has any blood relation to Bellatrix is not yet clear. Warner Bros. revealed Leta and Newt Scamander used to be close, but things changed when she got engaged to his brother, Theseus Scamander, who is shown on her left. Theseus, a war hero and Ministry of Magic Head Auror, is played by Callum Turner (Victor Frankenstein).
The familiar faces of Katherine Waterston, Eddie Redmayne, Dan Fogler and Alison Sudol, return to their roles of Tina Goldstein, Newt Scamander, Jacob Kowalski and Queenie Goldstein respectively. By now, Newt has published the textbook that made him famous, and Tina has her job back as an Auror at the Magical Congress of the United States of America.
Finally, much to some fans' chagrin, Johnny Depp will return as Gellert Grindelwald, Dumbledore's former friend/lover turned evil. The final showdown between the two powerful wizards in 1945 is expected to be the climax of the fifth and final Fantastic Beasts film. (Yes, there will be five, the last of which is expected to premiere in 2024.)
No word on Jessica Williams' mysterious character yet, and sadly no glimpse of actor Brontis Jodorowsky as alchemist Nicholas Flamel, whom Pottermore announced would be joining the cast last month.
So what does it all mean? When Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them ended, Grindelwald had escaped from the Wizard Cops (sorry, Aurors) and is getting ready to build up his evil army. Young Dumbledore will enlist his favorite student Newt to help fight said evil army. Tragic and powerful Credence has possibly been turned to the dark side, but he seemed pretty annoyed when Grindelwald for betrayed him, so who knows. And how exactly the "fantastic beasts" will enter into the "crimes of Grindelwald" remains to be seen.
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is directed by David Yates, who has done all the Potter films since Order of the Pheonix and is on track to helm all five Fantastic Beasts films. J.K. Rowling wrote the screenplay and produced, alongside Potter veterans David Heyman, Steve Kloves and Lionel Wigram.
