According to ComingSoon, JK Rowling finished the screenplay for her book Harry Potter-based book, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and filming will start next year. This should be no surprise to those who’ve been keeping up with all things Harry Potter, but it’s still nice to actually get confirmation that it’s moving forward. David Heyman, producer of Fantastic Beasts and director of the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows films confirmed this with The Telegraph:
At the premiere of his new film, Paddington, Heyman said that “Jo [Rowling] has written a wonderful script. It’s early stages. David Yates is directing and we start filming next year. I’m just really excited about it.”
The movie tells of the adventures of fictional author Newt Scamander, who is mentioned in the Harry Potter books, but not featured in them. It takes place seventy years before the events of Harry Potter, and it will obviously feature some amazing magical creatures that Newt ends up writing about in a book that becomes a standard text for Hogwarts students.