Colin Farrell will star as a New York wizard named Graves in JK Rowling’s Harry Potter prequel Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
Farrell, who is currently appearing in HBO’s True Detective, will appear alongside Eddie Redmayne’s Newt Scamander, the swashbuckling “magizoologist” at the centre of the new movie’s narrative. Scamander is said to meet his magical counterpart on a visit to the Big Apple, and Fantastic Beasts appears to be largely set in New York, with Rowling herself having hinted the film will reveal the existence of an American version of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry made famous in Harry Potter books and movies. An IMDb synopsis says the movie presents “the adventures of writer Newt Scamander in New York’s secret community of witches and wizards, 70 years before Harry Potter reads his book in school”.
Redmayne signed on to play Scamander in June, following his best actor Oscar win in February for the title role in Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything. Studio Warner Bros has also signed British-born actor Katherine Waterston, best known for her roles in Inherent Vice and Boardwalk Empire, to play the lead role of New York witch Porpentina. The cast also includes Ezra Miller, Alison Sudol and Dan Fogler.
Rowling is writing her debut screenplay for Fantastic Beasts, which is due to hit cinemas in 2016. The film’s title is borrowed from the first-year textbook that the character the Boy Who Lived uses in the first novel in the series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Rowling also published a “magizoology” compendium under the same title in 2001 to raise money for the charity Comic Relief.
Harry Potter regular David Yates will direct the new movie, which is expected to be the first of a new trilogy. The Potter films currently stand as the second-highest-grossing movie franchise in history, behind the more loosely linked Marvel superhero movies, generating $7.7bn (£4.6bn) in box-office receipts.
