Today IMAX has released a new Behind The Frame featurette featuring Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald director David Yates, producer David Hayman, Eddie Redmayne and Jude Law discussing why IMAX is the ideal format for bringing the Wizarding World to life. From the biggest screens to heart-pounding audio and an awe-inspiring picture, it is more fantastic in IMAX!
“You want to be taken to another place and IMAX takes you there like no other format.” – Producer David Hayman
“When you watch an event movie, you want to see it on the best screen you can.” – Director David Yates
“It’s somewhat out of body. It’s like you’re in the Wizarding World. I like the scale and the experience of watching everything on the massive screen.” – Actor Jude Law
The IMAX release of Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald will be digitally re-mastered into the image and sound quality of The IMAX Experience® with proprietary IMAX DMR® (Digital Re-mastering) technology. The crystal-clear images, coupled with IMAX’s customized theatre geometry and powerful digital audio, create a unique environment that will make audiences feel as if they are in the Wizarding World themselves.
In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Harry Potter (and now Fantastic Beasts) producer David Heyman talks about the films and working in the industry. He is set to receive the David O. Selznick Achievement Award at the 27th annual Producers Guild Awards this weekend. The Fantastic Beasts related questions may be read below:
Why did you decide to return to the world of Harry Potter?
It was exciting to move on and to embrace new challenges with Gravity and Paddington, but when it finished, there was a not-insignificant sadness because [the Potter films] had been such a big part of my life. Jo Rowling created such an incredibly rich and deeply conceived world. What you read in the books is in some ways just the surface of this world. I’d ask her about the [character Sirius Black’s] family tree because we had to paint it on the wall [for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix], and the book only had two names, and half an hour later I’d receive a family tree going back six generations with 100 people. I’m sure Newt Scamander and his story have been in her mind for many years. We were sitting around wondering what else we could do in this world, and [producer] Lionel Wigram, who is the person I first brought the first [Potter] book to, thought about maybe doing a documentary about Newt. That idea was floated to Jo, and she responded to doing a film about [that character].
Is Beasts designed as a franchise?
We’ve talked about making a couple, but with all these things — and this may be a failing of mine — I don’t look at them as franchises; I look at them as films. We want to make each film as good as we can because if you don’t, you won’t have a second film or a third.
What’s the biggest difference between Fantastic Beasts and the Harry Potter films?
Not having to work children’s hours. (Laughs.) And it’s set in 1920s New York as opposed to the U.K. in the ’90s.
He also answers a question about what he wishes he knew when he first started producing.
It’s something I know but I struggle to do: not take it all personally. On the one hand I think it’s important to take it all personally because you have to fight to the bitter end to make it as good as it can be, but at the same time, as one faces rejection on a daily basis, it can be hard at times.
Empire Magazine has released a new photo of Eddie Redmayne as Newt Scamander in the upcoming film, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. The photo shows Newt and his magical briefcase ascending some steps in New York City with a crowd behind him. The picture comes from their February issue, on stands December 31st. The issue will have interviews with cast and crew, including producer David Heyman. Empire released a short snippet of their interview with him:
“Newt is a magizoologist who’s just completed a global journey to find and document magical creatures for a book he plans on writing,” Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts producer David Heyman tells Empire. “His case is important because it contains some of the creatures he’s been researching. It may be small, but there’s a whole world within.”
A bottomless case filled with magical beasties, then? Might there be a dragon or two? Heyman isn’t saying but he did give an insight into the scale of the production, currently filming at Potter HQ, Watford’s Leavesden Studios. “On some days we’ve had several hundred extras, all done up in 1920s costumes. We are going into the magical world, but we’re bringing the magical characters into the Muggle, or ‘Nomaj’, world.”
While out promoting his new film Paddington, which was released in the UK back in November and will hit US theatres on January 16th, David Heyman briefly discusses the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them films and reveals that production designer Stuart Craig will be back for the films. Stuart was the designer for all the Potter films as well as Universal’s theme parks.
“The experience of conjuring up these worlds is such fun. So to do it with [Rowling] and with Steve Kloves and Lionel Wigram is involved too, and with David Yates, and Stuart Craig will be designing it; it’s great. It’s exciting, and it’s a great world to return to.”
He also revealed that shooting will begin this Summer: “We will shoot later on this year. The plan is to shoot late summer.”
On the subject of casting he say: “Early, early, early days. Really early days. I mean we’re at the very beginning.”In regards to three films he states: “We’re making just one film, but I believe there’s been talk about it being three. But we’re just talking about it as one.”
In a new interview with Digital Spy, producer David Heyman discusses Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them as well as their decision to split Deathly Hallows into two films. Watch below,and thanks to SnitchSeeker we also have a transcript. David is very soft-spoken so you’ll have to turn up your volume.
I know you’ve said before it’s helped you in your career to have lived in America and here. So how does it feel to be going back to the world of Potter that’s going to be set in New York for Fantastic Beasts?
David Heyman: Anything that Jo creates is exciting to be a part of. She has such an incredible imagination. It’s a privilege to have worked with her on the eight Potter films and to be working with her again on this. She’s written a wonderful script. I’m very, very excited.
Are you looking to start casting soon for Newt?
Heyman: I think we’ll probably start up sometime next year.
How do you feel to have started this new trend – I think it was you – with Potter splitting the final chapter into two? It’s now kind of the norm.
Heyman: That was so not a calculated decision. It was really borne purely out of creative imperative. I think if we’d done one film, it’d have been four-five hours long. As much as people’s attention is much … people love Potter – I think they would have struggled, and we’d have had to cut out too much to make it work.
So, I know people will find that hard to believe but I promise you it was borne out of creative imperative. Actually it wasn’t me who had the idea. Someone else had the idea: Lionel Wigram, who is producing Fantastic Beasts with me. And my initial reaction was no. He said, “No, David. How are we going to do it?” And I reread the books, and Steve Kloves, the screenwriter, we discussed it. It became clear it was the only way to tell the story that we wanted to tell in the way that we wanted to tell it. I don’t know whether all the others are borne out of a similar creative imperative. Maybe. But that was the source of ours.
In a new interview, Harry Potter producer David Heyman discusses the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them script, which was written by J.K. Rowling and will be produced by Heyman. He also discusses his latest film, Paddington, which hits theatres on November 28, 2014.
On Paddington:
‘I still have my Paddington teddy bear from when I was four,’ he says. ‘My mother’s a hoarder.’ Rereading them as an adult, he found them just as appealing. ‘They made me smile, they made me laugh, and I loved Paddington’s good nature, his generosity of spirit. It’s a classic immigrant story in many ways, about someone looking for a home, a place to be, and about a family who see the world afresh through this bear’s eyes.’
On Rowling and the Fantastic Beasts films:
‘[Rowling] is an incredibly generous person,’ Heyman says. ‘She’s one of the most philanthropic people around.’
The first of three new films set in the Harry Potter universe, albeit 70 years before Harry himself was born, it will also be the first film scripted by Rowling. ‘Jo’s a good scriptwriter, too,’ Heyman says. ‘She is so smart, and her turn of phrase, the precision of the language she uses, is a joy to behold.’
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