Actor, musician, and alleged spousal abuser Johnny Depp has been cast in a co-starring role in the second Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them movie, Deadline reports. The first film in the series will be released on Nov. 18 and may feature a cameo from Depp in advance of his larger role in the next episode. Warner Bros. plans to extract a series of five movies from J.K. Rowling’s slim book, a Harry Potter bestiary that is supposedly one of Potter’s in-universe textbooks. The films will deal with the creation of the book, which, in the Harry Potter universe, was written in the 1920s by a wizard named Newt Scamander. Judging from the first film’s trailer, the series will focus on battles between wizards, nonwizards, and magical creatures, rather than the exciting world of Prohibition-era textbook writing.
David Yates, who directed the last four films in the Harry Potter series as well as the first Fantastic Beasts film, will direct the Depp-starring installment as well; production will begin early next year for a 2018 release. The series marks J.K. Rowling’s debut as a screenwriter; her script for the first installment will be published shortly after the film opens. Depp—a veteran of the Pirates of the Caribbean, Alice in Wonderland, and Mortdecai franchises—will no doubt be very helpful as Rowling and Warner Bros. continue to transform her humble series of novels into a full-blown, self-sustaining transmedia revenue stream. Still no word, however, as to whether Depp’s character will be quirky, whimsical, eccentric, or some combination of all three.
