Fantastic Beasts: Will Harry Potter spin-off be a hit?

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them doesn't open in cinemas for another three months, but Warner Bros must have a good feeling about it because they have already announced a sequel in 2018.

It will be penned by JK Rowling, who is making her screenwriting debut with the first film, reports the BBC. Fantastic Beasts director, David Yates, who was in charge of the final four Harry Potter films, will also back.

Warner Bros said the follow-up "moves deeper into an increasingly dark time for the wizarding world, where Newt and our other heroes have to decide on their allegiances".

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

"Warner Bros isn't having much luck with the DC Films Universe, but they're clearly confident in the chances of Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them being a hit," says Josh Wilding on website HeyUGuys.

It has been known for a while that Rowling envisioned the series as a trilogy, but this is the first time Warner's has confirmed the plan, he adds.

It's a bold move, continues Wilding, but "in all honesty", being connected to the Harry Potter franchise "pretty much ensures" the film will be a critical and commercial hit, "despite the fact that it's obviously impossible for that character to appear in any form".

Fantastic Beasts the film is neither a sequel nor a prequel to the Potter adventures. Instead, it is set 70 years before the young wizard's story begins, although it incorporates magical creatures and characters from Potter mythology.

It tells the story of Newt Scamander, a "magizoologist" played by Eddie Redmayne who travels to New York in the 1920s to document unusual creatures. However, his collection of strange beasts escape, causing mayhem for both wizards and muggles (No-Majes, in the new world).

A trailer released at the San Diego Comic-Con in July shows the animal causing havoc while Newt tries to get them under control with the aid of No-Maj Jacob Kowalski, played by Dan Fogler. Colin Farrell appears as Percival Graves, a high-ranking wizard tasked with tracking down Newt and containing the damage.

The stories will also introduce the New Salem Philanthropic Society, a group of anti-magic extremists keen on reviving witch trials to rid the world of magic.

Fantastic Beasts was originally announced as a film series in 2013, says Deadline Hollywood, but is based on a Hogwarts textbook mentioned in Rowling's first novel in the series, Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone.

Rowling also penned a Fantastic Beasts book for Comic Relief in 2001, presenting it as if it was an actual school textbook.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them opens 18 November, with the sequel set for 16 November 2018. A third movie is pencilled in for November 2020.