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‘Harry Potter’ Spin Off Movie: Colin Farrell Joins Cast As Wizard

By Stacey Cole
Published on: 06:47 PST, Aug 16, 2015

Harry Potter fans, here is some more good news for you. Irish actor Colin Farrell has been confirmed to join the already eclectic cast of the Harry Potter spin off movie, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Farrell will play Graves, a wizard that Newt Scamander (being played by Academy Award winner Eddie Redmayne) meets in New York. The screenplay of the Harry Potter spin off has been penned by none other than J.K. Rowling herself, and takes place about 70 years before Harry Potter reads Newt’s book in school during his first year at Hogwarts.

Rowling was keen to set the film in United States, and had previously hinted at creating an American version of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, which now finally seems to have come to fruition with the Harry Potter spin-off movie. Warner Brothers describes the story of the movie.

“The laws and customs of the hidden magical society will be familiar to anyone who has read the Harry Potter books or seen the films, but Newt’s story will start in New York, 70 years before Harry’s gets under way.”

The Mirror reports that Warner Brothers had recently also called an open audition in London for the role of 12-year-old female character Modesty.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is predicted to be at least a trilogy, but Warner Brothers has confirmed that the fate of the franchise depends on how the first film fares at the box office. Considering the already loyal fan base of Harry Potter, however, it should not surprise us if the movie does as well as other Harry Potter films.

The first film has a tentative release date of November 18, 2016, and is being produced by long-time Harry Potter producer David Heyman and Steve Cloves, who is known for writing the first seven out of the eight Harry Potter movies.

Apart from Colin Farrell and Eddie Redmayne, the movie also stars Katherine Waterson, Ezra Miller, Alison Sudol, and Dan Fogler, and is set to be directed by David Yates, who also directed the last four Harry Potter films.

Colin Farrell, who is currently starring on the second season of HBO’s True Detective, recently also starred in Yargos Lanthimos’ The Lobster, which won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival back in May.

We can’t wait for more Harry Potter mania, and now with Colin Farrell casting spells too, we are surely in for a magical time.

[Photo: Wikipedia, Andrew Goodman / Getty Images]

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