According to Nikki Finke, there’s a good chance that Alfonso Cuaron is about to return to J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter universe. A spinoff franchise, based on her book Fantastical Beasts and Where To Find Them, was announced last year, and now it looks like they want Cuaron in the director’s chair. 

This makes tons of sense, considering the Mexican filmmaker is largely credited as being the man that turned the Harry Potter movie franchise around. The first two films in the series, directed Chris Columbus, did great business but were seen as okay movies. They were kind of safe and bland. Cuaron directed the third film, Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban, and took the series in a darker, more mature direction. Future Potter directors David Yates and Mike Newell built off of Cuaron’s stylistic choices once the director had left his mark franchise. Series lead Daniel Radcliffe has also spoken effusively about how the director really helped him grow as an actor.

Getting him back in the director’s chair would be a real coupe for Warner Bros, as he is coming off of last year’s Academy Award darling Gravity, which took home 7 statues on the big night.

Finke has been an extremely reliable source for big Hollywood news over the years, so you can more or less count on this being true. Whether or not a deal ends up being struck is anybody’s guess, but it’s good to see that Warner Bros is looking to someone who helped reignite Harry Potter’s cinematic spark as they prepare to invite audiences back to Rowling’s universe.