Harry Potter series author J.K. Rowling just inked a deal with Warner Bros. for a new film series set in the universe that brought us such things as Quidditch, Nearly Headless Nick and Draco Malfoy’s iconic, “My father will hear about this.”
The movies will focus on Newton Scamander, author of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. The text is a fictitious textbook for most Hogwarts students and the man who penned the tome has only been mentioned in passing in the Harry Potter books and had a brief cameo — more of an Easter egg, actually — in the film version of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (His name can be seen on the Marauder’s Map in one scene.)
The Internet is already rife with speculation and buzz on just what the plot of the movie series will entail. Kotaku editors seem to think that Newt is, in fact, Buckbeak, the hippogriff who helped Sirius Black escape Hogwarts and impending doom in Prisoner of Azkaban.
Fantastic Beasts was actually published in 2001, along with Quidditch Through the Ages, as companion books to the Harry Potter series at the beginnings of the franchise’s popularity. We’ll have to wait for more details as Rowling releases them, but in the meantime, Potterheads are sitting pretty. Actually, they’re more like: