If you saw the Harry Potter prequel Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them over the weekend and were a tad underwhelmed with the scope of J.K. Rowling’s expanded universe, don’t worry too much about the future films. It might seem hard to imagine that Rowling and director David Yates will be able to wring another four films out of this concept, but rest assured that they have a plan. It’s going to be a very small, tight, intimate story that takes place over multiple decades, spanning world-shaping events.
/Film collected some of the British author’s tweets in response to fan feedback, and among those correspondences was a reply to a question about why this was planned as a five-part film series.
Rowling explained that this was necessary because it’s really hard to fit a story that begins before the Great Depression and ends at the tail end of World War II into one film.
She later clarified that while the series was originally intended to be a trilogy, it was ultimately expanded to fit an additional two films. This should all come as great news to everybody, aside from those who saw Peter Jackson’s Hobbit movies.