Bloomsbury; Getty ImagesWho better to tame the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them than someone who's already familiar with J.K. Rowling's wizarding world?!
David Yates, who helmed the last four films in the Harry Potter franchise, is attached to direct the screenplay penned by Rowling as a spinoff based on one of the books that Harry and his mates studied at Hogwarts.
Rowling announced the intent to start a new franchise last September—cue the thrilled reactions of fans who couldn't have been more over the moon if they had been riding Nimbus 2000s.
According to Variety, sources have said that no deal has been inked yet, but Yates is in the negotiation stage.
Yates, who won the 2011 BAFTA Children's Award for Best Feature Film Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (shared with Rowling and producers David Heyman and David Barron), also directed Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, HP and the Half Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows: Part 1.
So he knows his way around Rowling's alternative London—although Fantastic Beasts, which purports to follow the adventures of the famed textbook's author, "magizoologist" Newt Scamander, will likely involve way more creatures than Harry ever came across.
"The laws and customs of the hidden magical society will be familiar to anyone who has read the Harry Potter books or seen the films, but Newt's story will start in New York, seventy years before Harry's gets underway," Rowling revealed last fall. "I always said that I would only revisit the wizarding world if I had an idea that I was really excited about and this is it."
And even though Daniel Radcliffe has dashed all muggle hopes that he'll appear in any other movies as Harry Potter—the question is "not even hypothetical," he said last month—we have a feeling fans will be lining up in droves. (Besides, this takes place 70 years before the boy who lived.)
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them can be found in theaters Nov. 18, 2016.