It’s time for Fantastic Beasts news, ladies and gents. It may seem like only yesterday that the Harry Potter spinoff Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them hit theaters, but believe it or not, it’s been nearly seven months since Newt Scamander tracked down his briefcase of magical creatures in New York City. Given that they plan on releasing one of these movies every two years for the next decade, it makes sense that they’d be pretty far along in the process for the next one by this point.

Even prior to the release of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, J.K. Rowling had completed a draft of that second script, and in the time since then, she’s teased a successive draft via social media. Now it sounds like they’re going through the rigorous casting process for this next film. Yes, we have a good number of our cast, led by Eddie Redmayne, rounded out, but it looks like this second, currently unnamed Fantastic Beasts 2 will have feature a flashback that will see younger incarnations of our leads.

RELATED: J.K. Rowling Teases Script Progress For Fantastic Beasts 2

According to Pottermore, Warner Bros. has put out a casting call that is looking for teen versions of Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne), Leta Lestrange (Zoe Kravitz), Gellert Grindelwald (Johnny Depp), and Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law).

The ages they are looking for are 13 to 16 for Newt and Leta — along with an unknown character named Sebastian — and 16 to 18 for Dumbledore and Grindelwald.

This is interesting for a couple of reasons. (a) It’s worth noting that this means there will be a flashback at some point, (b) it seems to imply that Newt, Leta, Dumbledore, and Grindelwald are all relatively close in age. The latter point seems to be pretty counterintuitive, as Pottermore has Newt’s birth year at 1897 and Dumbledore’s at 1881. Either this means that we’re about to get some real inconsistencies as far as canon goes, or (more likely) there will be multiple flashbacks that show different periods of time. Of course, there is also the possibility that they’re looking for someone in that age range because wizards age differently from normal humans, but that feels pretty counterintuitive to me.

Regardless, this is great news for Potter mythology junkies, as it pretty much confirms that we’ll be delving even deeper into the relationship between Dumbledore and Grindelwald, and that will undoubtedly change the way we think of things from the Potter series. Our only hope is that they work to give Newt Scamander an arc of his own. While I enjoyed the first film, I felt a bit hollow at the end, because when all said and done, Newt hadn’t changed at all, and we still knew virtually nothing about him.

What do you hope to see from Fantastic Beasts 2? Let us know your thoughts own below!

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SOURCE: Pottermore

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