Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them Featurette Cracks Open Newt’s Mystical Briefcase

Seven mainline novels, eight movies, and one lasting legacy makes for quite the magical foundation – and doesn’t Warner Bros. know all about it. Later this year, the studio will return to J.K. Rowling’s world of witchcraft and wizardry only this time, for an adventure that doesn’t involve the Boy Who Lived.

Instead, Potterheads will be indulging in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, David Yates’ mystical offshoot that takes place a full 70 years before Harry Potter’s plight against He Who Must Not Be Named.

And so, in hopping across the pond, we are introduced to Newt Scamander, a proud Hufflepuff and pioneer in the field of magizoology. Armed with his trusty briefcase – packed to the rafters with strange and wonderful creatures – Eddie Redmayne’s dashing lead pays a visit to the Magical Congress of the United States of America, and it’s there that said case breaks open, unleashing all of the magical beasts upon a Wiz-phobic US of A.

While we don’t expect to clock eyes on those beasts until a later date, a new featurette released today casts light on Newt’s spellbinding briefcase, and just why our hero holds it near and dear.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them will hope to usher in a new era for Potterheads when David Yates’ fantastical offshoot opens in theaters on November 18. Gemma Chan, Carmen Ejogo, Jon Voight, Katherine Waterston, Ezra Miller, Colin Farrell and Ron Perlman also star.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them opens in 1926 as Newt Scamander has just completed a global excursion to find and document an extraordinary array of magical creatures. Arriving in New York for a brief stopover, he might have come and gone without incident…were it not for a No-Maj (American for Muggle) named Jacob, a misplaced magical case, and the escape of some of Newt’s fantastic beasts, which could spell trouble for both the wizarding and No-Maj worlds.