I am incredibly excited for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, as I imagine most other Harry Potter fans are as well. Warner Bros. was always going to continue the Potter franchise in some way after Deathly Hallows, so it’s great to know that the series remains in the hands of its creator—J.K. Rowling—and isn’t some simple cash-grab on which Rowling carries some meaningless “Executive Producer” title. Instead, when Warner Bros. set about adapting Rowling’s ancillary Potter book Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Rowling climbed aboard as the film’s screenwriter, and now we’re just months away from a brand new Potter-verse story written by Rowling herself.

However, as you might expect, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is only the beginning. When the film was first announced, WB made it clear that they were intending on kicking off a trilogy of films with this first movie, and not only is the sequel in development, it’s already written.

David Yates first joined the Potter world as the director of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, going on to helm Half-Blood Prince and the Deathly Hallows films as well, and now he’s a bona fide Potter expert as he also directed Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. While speaking with EW about the upcoming film, he confirmed that Rowling has already written the screenplay for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them 2 and had a tantalizing tease for where the story goes:

“We’ve seen the script for Part 2, for the second movie, which takes the story in a whole new direction – as you should, you don’t want to repeat yourself. The second movie introduces new characters as she builds this part of the Harry Potter universe further. It’s a very interesting development from where we start out. The work is pouring out of her.”

Fantastic Beasts already promises to be different from Potter in a number of ways. It revolves around adults in the Wizarding World, not children; it takes place in America, not the U.K.; and it’s set in the 1920s, not present day. So the possibilities are rather limitless when it comes to where things go from here, and as Fantastic Beasts looks to be tackling some seriously relevant socio-political themes, I can’t wait to see what new delights Rowling has in store for audiences.

We’ll no doubt learn more at next week’s Comic-Con panel. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them opens in theaters on November 18th and stars Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Alison Sudol, Dan Fogler, Colin Farrell, and Ezra Miller.

via Collider