Rowling to pen new magic movie

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J.K. Rowling

British author J.K. Rowling, who finished her seven-book Harry Potter series about adventures of the boy wizard in 2007, has decided to write a screenplay for a film based on a minor character in the series.

The film will be the first in a new series inspired by Harry Potter’s Hogwarts textbook, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and will feature the book’s fictitious author, Newt Scamander, Warner Bros said. The Edinburgh-based writer’s series of seven Harry Potter books were a worldwide publishing phenomenon and Rowling had announced she would not write any more Potter books. The Potter books, which have been translated into 74 languages, were turned into eight blockbuster films by American studio Warner Bros. The idea for a Harry Potter spinoff film started when Warner approached Rowling to write a screenplay based on Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which she had written earlier as a side project along with Quidditch Through The Ages and The Tales of Beedle the Bard. She instead proposed to write about Newt Scamander, the fictitious author of the book. The film will be set in New York, some 70 years before the time of Harry Potter. “Although it will be set in the worldwide community of witches and wizards where I was so happy for 17 years, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is neither a prequel nor a sequel to the Harry Potter series, but an extension of the wizarding world. 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, 70 years before Harry’s gets under way,” Rowling said.