Fantastic Beasts Director David Yates On Returning To The Harry Potter Universe

This December, fans will be welcomed back to the magical world of Harry Potter. The beloved franchise will return to theaters with Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, a spin-off film written by J.K. Rowling. A familiar face came back to the Harry Potter universe to direct Fantastic Beasts as David Yates signed onto the film. Now, the filmmaker is speaking about his return and calling the decision a “a bit of a no-brainer.”

Speaking with Collider, Yates said he got plugged back into the Wizarding World after Warner Bros. sent him the script for Fantastic Beasts. “Well, they sent me the script and I wasn’t certain ’cause I’d spent six years here on those four Potter films, and they sent me the script and I was really nervous ’cause I had to really fall in love with it to come back. And I didn’t know if I could come back,” he said.

Luckily, Yates fell hard for the story. “It was just the most delightful read. It was charming, moving, tender. It felt fresh and it was with a bunch of people that I really love working with so, it was a bit of a no-brainer.”

The director went on to say he was excited to tackle a Harry Potter film which had no predecessors. Yates filmed the last four Harry Potter films to critical acclaim. However, the director did admit there were some restrictions placed upon his work since he entered the franchise after four films.

“It [Harry Potter] was half way along the tracks and I got to do my thing with it but all the pieces were already on the table,” he explained. “Whereas, with this movie I built it from the ground up effectively. So, for a filmmaker and the storyteller that is always the most exciting thing — to sort of cast it, to create it, to build it. I loved Jo’s concept of just dropping it into New York in 1926. Taking her universe but putting it through that paradigm was really exciting. And works.”

And, what’s more, Fantastic Beasts doesn’t have a novel which precedes it. Unlikely the other Harry Potter films, Fantastic Beasts is loosely based on a one-shot textbook that J.K. Rowling wrote about the magical world’s impossible creatures. When Yates was asked whether he enjoyed that new freedom, the director said, “it’s incredibly liberating.”

“You know with the books, everybody had their own their own idea of what certain characters should be like, how the story should evolve. You’re always working in the context of people’s expectations which is fine and great and wonderful, as it should be actually ’cause they are wonderful books. But what’s marvelous about this series is nobody has ever read them.”

“The only limit is Jo’s imagination, which is boundless. And she’s taking us all on quite an extraordinary journey with this story. And this is the first chapter, in a way, and so, it’s lovely not to have the book. But you know, the books and the movies of the Potters, they kind of coexisted in a way I feel. But it’s very exciting not to have people’s own, sort of, versions of the film in their head.”

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them will be the screenwriting debut of J.K. Rowling, the creator of Harry Potter. Rowling is also writing the script for the sequel. Fantastic Beasts has been planned as a trilogy of films inspired by the Hogwarts textbook of the same name, which Rowling wrote and had published in 2001. The film follows Newt Scamander (Redmayne), the author of said textbook) , in the 1920s, while he was still researching magical creatures. The magizoologists make his way to New York City with his suitcase full of magical creatures. When some of those creatures manage to escape, it creates tension between the American magical community, governed by the Magical Congress of the United States of America, and the No-Maj (American muggle) community.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them opens in theaters on Nov. 18, 2016.

[H/T] Collider