Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling announced about three weeks ago that she would be making her screenwriting debut with a spinoff film set in the world of Harry Potter that follows the exploits of Newt Scamander, a professor of magical creatures and author of the fictitious book "Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them" set 70 years before the events of the first Harry Potter.
Entertainment Weekly caught up with David Heyman, who produced all eight of the original Harry Potter films, at the premiere event for his latest film "Gravity" to discuss some details about the Harry Potter spinoff film.
He was reasonably tight lipped about the film but did manage to give an update on the progress of the script, saying that Rowling has not turned in a finished product just yet.
"Jo is at work," he said. "She's not doing it for any other reason other than she loves the world and she had a story that she wanted to tell."
Rowling created such a vast universe throughout the Harry Potter series that she clearly couldn't wait to revisit. This seemed to impress Heyman.
"It's incredibly exciting," he continued. "She doesn't have to go back to this world, but something pulled her back. This is not Harry Potter. This is not Harry, Ron, and Hermione. This is a separate story within a universe related to the Potter universe."
Although he cleverly dodged any questions about which beasts and which adventures the movie will cover, he hint that Rowling has clearly had these ideas for quite some time and, as a result, he feels confident that she'll have no shortage of plots to work from.
"The fact that she's going to this world means there are stories to tell," he said. "When I was doing the Harry Potters, what was clear to me is that Jo's knowledge of this world is infinite. What you read in the books was just the surface of her knowledge. She had notebook upon notebook of stuff. I would call her and say, 'What's the sixth use of dragon's blood?' and she'd have it at her fingertips."
"In the fifth film," he continued. "I think it was, we had the Black family tree," he recalled. "I called her, and literally 20 minutes later I receive this family tree, via fax in those days, with a hundred names and about six generations with birthdays, death dates, marriages, all figured out. She knew it."
