Next 'Fantastic Beasts' movie thrills fans with return to Hogwarts

[March 14, 2018]   LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The second of the "Fantastic Beasts" movie spinoffs from author J.K. Rowling includes scenes set in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, directly connecting the story to the best-selling "Harry Potter" books and films, a first movie trailer on Tuesday showed.

The trailer for Warner Bros' "Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald," to be released in November, also gave fans a first glimpse of actor Jude Law as a dapper, bearded, young version of Hogwarts' venerable headmaster Albus Dumbledore, and featured parts of the famous "Harry Potter" music score.

The "Harry Potter" spinoff, which will eventually include five movies, is set some 70 years before Harry Potter went to the British boarding school and learned to become a wizard.

The "Crimes of Grindelwald" trailer was the first to show Hogwarts as part of the "Fantastic Beasts" story, which centers around Newt Scamander, a "magizoologist" with a suitcase full of strange creatures.

"omg Hogwarts!! Dumbledore!! The Harry Potter Theme!! the chills!! the tears!! the memories!! sooooo hyped!!," wrote one fan, Hunter, on YouTube after watching the trailer.

"Omg... I was dying... Like Hogwarts is magical... I can't even express to you how happy I am that we're going to be seeing that beautiful castle again," commented Dhanya Binoy, another excited fan.

The first movie, "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them," which was written by Rowling, made $814 million at the global box offices after it was released in November 2016.

Rowling has said she thinks of the younger Dumbledore as a gay man who fell in love with Gellert Grindelwald, who later turned out to be evil and violent.

In the trailer, Dumbledore is shown in a Hogwarts classroom, and later telling actor Eddie Redmayne's Scamander: "I can't move against Grindelwald. It has to be you."

The movie also gives fans a glimpse of Johnny Depp as a pale, long-haired, disheveled Grindelwald, the character who embodies the dark forces in both the "Harry Potter" and "Fantastic Beasts" movies.

The eight "Harry Potter" movies made $7 billion at the global box office. "Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald" will be released on Nov. 16, 2018.

(Reporting by Jill Serjeant; Editing by Suzannah Gonzales)

[© 2018 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved.]

Copyright 2018 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.  Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.