Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling has updated her official website with answers to a couple of new Fantastic Beasts questions. Specifically, Jo addresses the amount of detail she’s fleshed out for the Fantastic Beasts characters and story (beyond what we see on the screen), as well as an answer to the notion that ‘beasts’ might refer to both human and animal characters.
On the topic of Fantastic Beasts exposition, Jo says:
‘I envisioned [Newt Scamander] a doggedly different, awkward man who was at a loss with humans but phenomenally skilled with beasts. As for Dumbledore and Grindelwald, I knew a huge amount more than ever appeared in the books, and this is my chance to show/tell some of it. Of course, in a film, one is revealing a story in a very different way than one does in a novel. Sometimes a single look does the job of three paragraphs. As readers of the original books will know, the pair of them don’t meet for a long time between their teenage interactions and their epoch-making confrontation in 1945. Nevertheless, we’ll be exploring their backstory in the films.’
And on the topic of ‘beasts’ referring to both human and animal characters, Jo explains:
‘The human world around Newt and his friends is becoming darker and more complex, and the original hunt for escaped creatures will become a hunt for something much more elusive and difficult: a return to humanity.’