Fantastic Beasts Live Event

This past Thursday, Harry Potter fans around the world were welcomed back into the magical world that J.K. Rowling created with the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them live stream event.

Fans worldwide were able to participate and see a special on hour Q&A session through the Official Fantastic Beasts Facebook page. Even luckier were the fans who were able to attend one of the special theater screenings, who got to not only got some exclusive goodies (#IWanttobeaWizard shirts, Newt Scamander’s wand and a mini movie poster), but we were also treated to the first 10 minutes of the movie (which I have to say were amazing!)

While the event was worldwide, 5 locations were chosen to participate in the live stream: Rome, New York City, Mexico City, Los Angeles with Colin Farrel (Percival Graves) and Jon Voight (Henry Shaw Sr.) as special guests and last but certainly not least London, where the main cast Eddie Redmayne (Newt Scamander), Alison Sidol (Queenie), Katherine Waterston (Tina), Dan Fogler (Jacob), David Yates and producer David Heyman director and producer of the last 4 HP films and J.K. Rowling where in attendance.

Some of the Q&A highlights included:

Question from New York City: With all the history and enthusiasm that surrounds the Harry Potter franchise, did you feel extra pressure in your performance to please the fans or do you take this as an opportunity to create something completely new and different?

Eddie: The honest answer is…I feel enormous pressure…We had quite high expectations of ourselves, I think. We didn’t want to screw it up. But once we read the script and realized that is was all those things that you’re familiar with in J.K. Rowling’s world, all of that every day magic… And so the pressure there decreased for a moment.

Question from Brazil: What did you learn from Jacob, aside from being a No-Maj?

Dan: You don’t have to have magical powers to feel magical on the inside.

Everyone can relate to this wisdom from @mrdanfogler at yesterday's #FantasticBeasts Global Fan Event. pic.twitter.com/fIHiyBhH3c

— Fantastic Beasts (@FantasticBeasts) October 14, 2016

Question from London: What is next for Newt?

David Yates: We next see Newt in a big capital city and it’s not going to be New York, it’s somewhere else entirely. Jo’s actually written the script. And it’s just as marvelous and just as magical as the first one but very different which is so exciting for all of us.

Eddie: Can I just jump in and say, one of the best moments for us on set was when Jo would come to set and I think David found it sort of a mixture of wonderful and mildly frustrating because we would turn into like 7 year olds, we’d stop work…and Jo would come up to us and she would say, “I’m working on the new script. I”m not allowed to tell you anything, gasp!” and she would start launching forward (J.K. Rowling enters the panel.)

London interviewer: What can you tell us?

J.K. Rowling: (points to the cast) I’ve told them everything. Eddie’s just told the truth. I kept telling them things I shouldn’t have told them. They know quite a lot. They’ve been lying to you. They know everything. They don’t know everything but they know quite a lot about the next movie. But yeah, I get excited, I tell actors things.

London Interviewer to J.K. Rowling: The question that we asked David (Yates) that he sort of sidestepped was what can we expect for Newt? Can you tell us anymore?

J.K. Rowling: I can tell you that…umm…well David has told you that we do talk about Dumbledore and Grindlewald…he’s wincing (referring to one of the Davids) I’m not allowed to say too much. I can say one thing, we doing some script sessions the other day and I can tell you that we always knew that it was going to be more than one movie, we knew that from the start…But know I think we can say that…Am I allowed to say that David? Yes?  So now I’ve done the plotting properly, we’re pretty sure it’s going to be 5 movies. Which they (points to the shocked cast) didn’t know!