First thoughts: Grainger is a great match for Robin in appearance, inflection, and seriousness.
Burke as Strike? No doubt he is an excellent actor who is going to give this his all, but thespian skills and earnestness cannot make short, handsome, and svelte seem huge, ugly, and fat. For book readers, that’s always going to grate.
But he commands attention, that’s for sure. I listened ten times to the trailer’s closing exchange with Robin as he leaves the office and I never understood what he said. “I’m a boozer”? Must be the biscuit (cookie) he’s eating.
Guy Some seemingly tall, conventional, even straight, and definitely in a business suit? At least he’s black.
John Bristow in these snips doesn’t appear pathetic or buck-toothed but the actors playing Cyprian May, Lady Bristow, Ciarra Porter, Eric Wordle, and Rochelle Onifade look promising.
Your thoughts?
(1) Cormoran Strike is an imposing physical presence who is not handsome; he’s described as a hulk (not hunk!) who has “pube hair” and looks like a heavyweight boxer resembling Beethoven. Why in the world did you choose Tom Burke, a beautiful man who is relatively short and decidedly svelte, to play this part? You’ve cast a brilliant actor and leopard to play the part of a rhino, no?
(3) Rowling is definitely writing the series as she did Harry Potter with respect to writing books that also serve as chapters in the larger, over-arching mystery. Instead of the back story about the Dark Lord, of course, here we are learning book by book, more about the death of Strike’s mother Leda, the involvement of his father Jonny Rokeby the rock star, Robin’s past and her relationship with Matt, Cormoran’s history with Mad Charlotte, and information about the explosion in Afghanistan that took his leg. Rowling famously shared Snape’s back story with Alan Rickman so he knew where his character was headed and what his motivations were; has she tipped her hand to any of you?
A long time reader and frequent correspondent sent me a note this morning encouraging me to watch a YouTube video about the likelihood of Runic Magic becoming a major plot element in J. K. Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts movie series. It’s called 
With the exception of the Pentagram Room and background visual-noise created by MinaLima, what evidence is there of any runic magic in Beasts or for the speculations in this video? And the MinaLima artistry, engaging as it is, seems to have been created independently of script mentions or direction. Which is to say, not from any instruction we have in the published ‘Original Screenplay.’ Not that I’m embracing that version of the screenplay as authoritative, original, or final!
On 7 July, I thought to check J. K. Rowling’s twitter feed to see if she had posted anything about the anniversary of the 
The faculty here at HogwartsProfessor spent some time back then discussing that painting, ‘Allegory of the Vanities,’ amongst ourselves about what it might mean in terms of Lethal White, the Cormoran Strike mystery we’re waiting on and the work we assumed The Presence was working on then. We came up with little more than ‘remember death.’ Which given the first word of the Lethal White title and it being a murder mystery, did not seem to warrant a post. I’ll return to that in a moment after noting that Rowling was then working 
What makes her choice of the ‘Three Fates’ mortuary relief that much more interesting in this regard is that
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