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‘Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them’: New Promo Highlights American Version Of Hogwarts, Ilvermorny School

By Nicole Giacobone
Published on: 13:15 PST, Jun 28, 2016

It’s months away before Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them opens in movie theaters, but Warner Bros. Pictures released a new featurette to keep fans excited about the new J.K. Rowling film series. The nearly two-minute clip highlights the American version of Hogwarts, which is called Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

The short video introducing Ilvermorny comes at the same time that Rowling released a new June 28 post on Pottermore that goes more into detail about the American Hogwarts. Rowling’s new short story, titled Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, talks about the school’s origins, along with its founder’s life story and the creatures that inspired the houses of Ilvermorny.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkBPwEmakEc

While Harry Potter fans are used to the four houses of Hogwarts – Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff, and Ravenclaw – Ilvermorny, which is located in a wooded, mountainous area of Mount Greylock, Massachusetts, has its own four houses: Wampus, Horned Serpent, Pukwudgie, and Thunderbird.

The new Fantastic Beasts featurette includes a description of the North American Witchcraft and Wizardry school, along with Ilvermorny’s founder, Isolt Sayre. The school’s backstory features a few of the conflicts that are in the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them movie regarding the separation between the no-maj community, which is the Americanized version of muggles, and the magical community.

Ilvermorny’s founder, Isolt Sayre, has a background that sounds very similar to Harry Potter. Sayre was an orphan who was under the guardianship of a mean aunt for 12 years before Sayre ran away and embraced magic with a stolen unique wand.

Eventually, Sayre confronted and defeated her parents’ murderer. Sayre also has the ability to talk to snakes, just like a couple of famous wizards that come after her time. During Sayre’s adventures, she comes across many mysterious, fantastic beasts, which probably inspired Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them title.

Rowling gave a bit of a background of the creatures that the Ilvermorny houses were named after:

  • Wampus ? “A magical, panther-like creature that is fast, strong, and almost impossible to kill.”
  • Horned Serpent ? “A great horned river serpent with a jewel set into its forehead.”
  • Thunderbird ? “A creature that can create storms as it flies.”
  • Pukwudgie ? “A short, gray-faced, large-eared creature.”

Warner Bros. Pictures hopes to turn the Fantastic Beasts inaugural film into a fantasy trilogy. Rowling, who also wrote the film’s screenplay, has yet to go into detail about what the other two movies will be, but given Sayre’s backstory, there could possibly be a villain similar to Voldemort that is in the Fantastic Beasts universe.

The new featurette comes days after the release of the short video that features Newt Scamander, the Fantastic Beasts protagonist, played by The Danish Girl star Eddie Redmayne. In the upcoming film, Scamander travels to New York City in the 1920s where he encounters adventure and mayhem while trying to get used to the American wizarding world.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them tells the story of Scamander, a self-described magizoologist, and how he travels the world to find and study magical creatures. While Scamander is in New York City on a mission, his magical-enhanced suitcase, filled with the fantastic beasts, gets opened up and the creatures escape throughout the city.

While the Harry Potter prequel has a worldwide release date of November 18, Rowling is scheduled to participate in a special advanced screening of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them that involves Rowling’s non-profit children’s organization, as reported in Entertainment Weekly.

Redmayne will also be in attendance at the event, which will be held at Carnegie Hall in NYC on November 12. All of the proceeds will go to the Lumos Foundation USA, which helps disadvantaged children and their families get back on their feet.

[Image via Fantastic Beasts Film/Instagram]

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