Eddie Redmayne

Newt Scamander is back in ‘The Crimes of Grindelwald,’ also starring Jude Law as the young Dumbledore. Watch the trailer now!

The sequel to ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them’ got an official title today and cast photo, featuring the first photo of Jude Law as Dumbledore.

We’ve got a good news, bad news situation here, friends. First, the good news — which is actually great news: An official casting announcement for the sequel to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them has apparated online, revealing several new and returning cast members for Newt Scamander’s next adventure. Among the newcomers are a pair of mysterious roles played by Jessica Williams and Claudia Kim.

Aardman Animations, the folks who brought us Chicken Run, Shaun the Sheep, and Wallace & Gromit, are back with another delightful feature about a young caveman whose way of life is on the brink of extinction. Early Man stars the voice talents of Eddie Redmayne as Stone Age caveman Dug whose tribe is caught between one era of man and another wielding weapons made of metal, mammoths, and soccer.

Last year’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them left some questions unanswered — namely, where to find the fantastic beasts. The film never made good on the explicit promise of its title, its best guess at where the fantastic beasts might be located landing somewhere around “all over the place.” As such, a sequel was all but necessary, in the hopes that it can finally clarify the movements and settling patterns of fantastic beasts. (That, and the first movie made over $800 million.) And as principal photography got rolling in England this morning, new plot details and casting notices have been made public, though none brings us any closer to a workable knowledge of fantastic beasts, and/or where to find them.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is going to launch a new Harry Potter franchise whether you like it or not. The next installment will dive a little bit deeper into Newt Scamander’s past and also flesh out Dumbledore’s backstory and how it all connects to the beginnings of Voldemort. We already know that Newt has a very important ex, but apparently he also has a family, as his brother is currently being cast.

Aardman Animations brought us the story of a group of chickens escaping the coop and a cheese-loving inventor and his dog. Now the British animation studio behind Chicken Run and Wallace and Gromit is going back to prehistoric times for the story of a caveman and his sidekick pig, Hognob.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is a pretty lengthy title, but no less of a mouthful than, say, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — or pretty much any Potter film. With four more sequels on the horizon, one of our biggest questions about the series moving forward is how Warner Bros. will approach the titles. Fortunately, Eddie Redmayne has an answer.

J.K. Rowling‘s wizarding world has finally returned. Now that you’ve seen the new Harry Potter spinoff Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and read our spoiler-free review, it’s time discuss all the spoilers, criticisms, and theories for what’s next in the five-film franchise. Take out your wands, fill up a nice cold mug of Butterbeer, and get ready to go back in time to the 1920s.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them opens this week, but is the Harry Potter spinoff enough to kick off a brand new franchise? Will J.K. Rowling’s new movie connect to the Potter book series? ScreenCrush has new fan theories that could tie everything together. You might want to sit down for this.