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The magic is back in the first trailer for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

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Production is still underway on the Harry Potter spinoff Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, but that didn’t stop Warner Bros. Pictures from releasing the first trailer for the much-anticipated movie this week.

Clocking in at just under two minutes, the trailer offers a brief peek at the wizarding world prior to the events of the Harry Potter saga and sets up the adventure that will have “magizoologist” Newt Scamander tracking down all manner of magical beasts before they wreak havoc on the world.

Featuring a script penned by Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling, Fantastic Beasts casts Oscar-winning actor Eddie Redmayne as Newt Scamander and is set 70 years before the events of the Harry Potter films. The story is based on the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them textbook used by Harry and the other students at Hogwarts School, which was subsequently released as a standalone book penned by Rowling.

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The film follows Newt Scamander’s attempts to recover the fantastic creatures that escaped his magical briefcase during a layover in New York during 1926 after he concluded a research expedition.

Along with Redmayne, the cast of the film includes Ron Perlman, Katherine Waterston, Alison Sudol, Ezra Miller, Dan Fogler, Colin Farrell, Jenn Murray, Jon Voight, Gemma Chan, Carmen Ejogo, and Faith Wood-Blagrove. Farrell is reportedly playing a wizard named “Graves” who meets Scamander in New York.

David Yates, the director of the last four installments of the Harry Potter franchise (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and the two-part Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows), is also directing this latest film.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is scheduled to arrive in 3D, Imax, and standard theaters on November 18, 2016.

Simply watching the film won’t be good enough for you, you say? Well why not read the movie too? Rowling’s screenplay will be published on November 19, the day after Fantastic Beasts hits theaters.

It’s not every screenplay that ends up being published like this, but of course, not every screenwriter is J.K. Rowling. And it doesn’t matter that Fantastic Beasts marks her screenwriting debut; it has been proven time and time again that readers are ravenous for her work. In this case, they’ll be able to purchase either an eBook or a print edition of the screenplay. The digital version will be available on Pottermore, Amazon, iBooks, and Kobo, while the hard copy will be sold by a variety of print retailers. Little, Brown is behind the U.K. print edition, while the U.S. and Canada are covered by Scholastic.

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Rick Marshall
Rick Marshall
Former Digital Trends Contributor
A veteran journalist with more than two decades of experience covering local and national news, arts and entertainment, and…
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