Eddie Redmayne has made his critically-acclaimed living playing real-life people for the past few years, so good on him for taking a risk and heading up J.K. Rowling’s reentry into her own wizarding world, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. We’ve had a brief look into that world before, but last night, during the MTV Movie Awards, a fuller trailer was released, and boy does it give the goods.
The goods it gives are, of course, magic-related, but oddly beast-free. We do get to glimpse Colin Farrell and Katherine Waterston. There’s plenty of magic, too, mostly in the form of a bottomless suitcase and a bunch of flying/teleporting, though wands are conspicuously absent throughout. And, though this film doesn’t take place at the same time as the original series, it does make some clever allusions that are sure to hook any skeptical fans into buying tickets come the film’s November release date.
The biggest tie-in is a voiceover that talks of Redmayne’s Newt Scamander having been defended by a Hogwarts professor: Albus Dumbledore. The other smaller, more tingle-inducing touch is the inclusion of “Hedwig’s Theme.” It’s a piece of music that was beloved the minute Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone was released and changed lives in 2001, so it’s smart stuff that the marketers of Fantastic Beasts placed it at the tail-end of that film’s latest trailer, even if Hedwig doesn’t make an appearance.
Not included in this trailer: beasts, the awful “No-Maj” name given to North Americans who don’t practice magic, and any of the tragic magical origin stories that Rowling misguidedly attempted earlier this year.
Watch the clip below. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them will be released in November, probably early on in the month so it doesn’t have all of its sales stolen by Rogue One.