Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, penned by Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, will be developed into not one – but three feature films.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them Trilogy

When the Harry Potter spinoff series was first announced, the press release from Warner Bros., stated that Rowling would be writing the first film, implying there’d be another. Now, it’s been revealed that the studio is planning for three films.

Rowling has had a never-say-never attitude when it comes to delving deeper into the universe she created in the first seven Harry Potter books. Yet, she's admitted to being somewhat of a hard sell, and credited Warner Bros. CEO Kevin Tsujihara with convincing her to support an adaptation of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

"When I say he made Fantastic Beasts happen, it isn’t P.R.-speak but the literal truth,” Rowling told The New York Times. “We had one dinner, a follow-up telephone call, and then I got out the rough draft that I’d thought was going to be an interesting bit of memorabilia for my kids and started rewriting!”

Rowling previously went into greater detail about the script when she was interviewed by Harry Potter star Emma Watson for Wonderland magazine. “I really did have one of those moments that always make you phenomenally excited as a writer; but also that you know is going to end up being a ton of work,” Rowling told Watson, who played the brainy Hermione. “I thought, 'Oh my God, a whole plot's just descended on me!' But I wanted to do it as I was really excited about it.”

“I wasn't really thinking about writing the script myself, I thought, you know, I'll give them this plot and then – fatally – I sat down and thought 'I just wonder what it would look like…' and wrote a rough draft in twelve days!” the writer admitted, adding, "It wasn't a great draft but it did show the shape of how it might look. So that is how it all started…”

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them follows magical creatures expert Newt Scamander, who wrote the eponymous Hogwarts book. It will begin 70 years prior to the events in Rowling’s original series in the 1930s, across the pond from London in New York City.

– Chelsea Regan

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