David Yates is directing all five Fantastic Beasts movies

We already knew that the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them film series had gone from three to five films, but David Yates has now confirmed he is going to direct all of them. As he has also directed four of the Harry Potter movies, he is the go to guy for J.K. Rowling’s movies.

“I love making films, and I’ve got a great team, all of whom are like family,” he told THR at Thursday’s world premiere of the first Fantastic Beasts film. He is not going to let that responsibility swamp him “I only look at it movie to movie.”

J.K. Rowling, whose Fantastic Beasts screenplay is her first ever, will also write the other four films.

Yates said that the sequel “feels so different from this [first film]. Much more haunting, like a dream. What she’s doing is really interesting; she’s not repeating herself.”

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.

Directed by David Yates, the film stars Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Dan Fogler, Alison Sudol, Ezra Miller, Samantha Morton, Jon Voight, Ron Perlman, Carmen Ejogo, Jenn Murray, Faith Wood-Blagrove and Colin Farrell.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them opens on 18th November 2016.

More Fantastic Beasts coverageRowling also said the five films will cover 19 years, while talking to Variety. “To tell you the truth, we said a trilogy as a placeholder. We wanted to be honest with people that it was going to be more than one movie, but we were feeling our way. Then, there came a point in the drafting of our story where I said to David [Yates], ‘You know, this feels like five movies,’ and I think I’m pretty certain about that. It’s pretty ambitious to tell it in five to be honest because we’re spanning 19 years, but I can see an arc to five – so that’s how it happened.”

Yates is in preproduction for the second film, for which they’re building sets of Paris, France and Watford, England. It will introduce a young (and openly gay) Albus Dumbledore and expand on his rival, played by Johnny Depp.

The sequel is due out on 18th November 2018.

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