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J.K. Rowling Has Confirmed That We’re Getting FIVE Whole Fantastic Beasts Movies!

Personally, I hadn’t yet managed to get my head around the fact that we’re being blessed with a SINGLE Fantastic Beasts movie, much less an entire trilogy. And then J.K. Rowling was like, “Nah, scratch the trilogy thing; we’re doing a full-fledged SAGA.”

It’s been confirmed: the “trilogy” verbiage was merely a placeholder. Now that J.K. Rowling has done the “proper plotting,” she’s willing to reveal that we’re looking at five movies’ worth of Eddie Redmayne. Five!

Warner Bros/YouTube

Is five too many? I don’t know. Maybe. What I do know is that every time I see any sort of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them content, my heart swells three sizes and I do weird, excited things with my face. I also know that I can now answer the question “Where do you see yourself in five years?” with “Berobed in my wizarding best in the front row of my local theater, that’s where. Possibly forcibly evacuating several small children, because I was there first, I had a sweater draped across five seats and that’s what the sweater MEANS.” Take that, Mom and Dad. Of course I have a five-year plan.

And the five-film saga is just the tip of the good-news iceberg. The Potter movies are playing in theaters again until October 20th, and fans who attended a special global fan event yesterday got a sneak peek at the first ten minutes of Fantastic Beasts.

Highlights:

  • GRINDELWALD. GRINDELWALD. GRINDELWALD. Where before it seemed as if rising dictator Gellert Grindelwald (a sort of pre-Voldemort; he’s like the Regina George to Voldemort’s Cady Heron) was merely a background figure, now it’s looking increasingly like Gellert is going to have a much bigger role to play in the films to come. With the projected five-film timeline, I’m guessing we’ll see exactly how the OG dark wizard rose to power between 1926 and 1945—and how he met his defeat at the hands of Albus Dumbledore. It’s even been confirmed by director David Yates that Dumbledore will be popping up in the next movie! Here’s hoping the films don’t shy away from the “Dumbledore was 100% romantically in love with Grindelwald” aspect of things.
  • The American version of The Daily Prophet is The New York Ghost. If you haven’t been keeping up with the dizzying multitude of world-building posts by J.K. Rowling over at Pottermore, fear not. Through a series of headlines, we learn that Grindelwald is afoot, that security is tightening at Hogwarts, and that anti-magic sentiment in America is at an “all-time high.”
  • It’s visually stunning. You remember how all the special effects in the original films got infinitely better with David Yates at the helm of the ship? If the first ten minutes of Fantastic Beasts are any indication, I’d say we’re one step closer as a society to forgiving him for all the things he cut out of Order of the Phoenix.

One more thing: Warner Bros. released a three-minute fan featurette on YouTube yesterday. We got a two-second look at the Deathly Hallows symbol (!!!), as well as some familiar voiceovers that made me do those weird things with my face again.

Is your face also doing weird things? Can you hardly wait for November 18th? 

[Via USA TODAY.]