As y’all know, I hope, I have not invested myself in speculation about the next Fantastic Beasts film, Crimes of Grindelwald (not much, at least, since I wrote this a year ago). I don’t follow the trailers, MinaLima art, and still photography releases because we have only scratched the surface in unpacking Lethal White, the fourth Cormoran Strike novel, and the film speculation turns on information released in exotic places, seemingly at random, and semi-continuously. I’m busy, in other words, on reading a long work that is a Rowling solo effort — and I like my speculation to be based on the clues and mysteries in fixed texts we have in hand. Full stop.

Having said that, I would be neglecting my ‘Dean of Harry Potter Scholars’ responsibilities if I didn’t acknowledge the remarkable work being done at TheRowlingLibrary (Go, Patricio!), Univers Harry Potter, and by S. P. Sipal to monitor the global release of clues, to assemble them in tweets, posts, and videos, and to offer fascinating theories about what is coming in the next movie. This is some studiously serious Wizard sleuthing.

I love, for example, Sipal’s explanation of what DDore’s wrist manacles mean in the video above, the guess work connecting the necklace on the screenplay cover and the phoenix tears mentioned in the first film’s bar ballad, and the ideas about Grindelwald’s work with the skull, his transformation into a blue dragon, and the ingredients he needs for this alchemical magic. If half of what Sipal and company have doped out comes true, actually seeing the film will be anti-climactic! Did I mention an Unbreakable Vow?

Take that as a spoiler warning before you watch the video — and please let me know if you are as startled and impressed as I am about the worldwide search for Crimes of Grindelwald clues and the teams of researchers dedicated to finding and turning them into fun theories. I’m back to a re-reading of Lethal White…

My inbox is full of owls about the “final trailer” for Crimes of Grindelwald and its stunning revelations. Color me “non plussed.”

Were any of our regular readers surprised that the Maledictus was named Nagini? I hope not. I discussed it in November last year here and here, and Oxford’s Beatrice Groves explained it’s literary allusion here that December. Yesterday’s “big reveal” was rather stale news, I thought, for those paying attention.

Was anyone as disappointed as I was in the ‘Today’ show interview with The Presence and the Crimes of Grindelwald second-tier actors as I was? After 20-plus years of interviews, we spend more than ten minutes of a twenty minute interview on her the Cinderella story of Rowling’s single motherhood and how often she thinks of her mother? “Where do you get your ideas?” “What’s with the return to red hair?”

Rowling managed to sneak in a reference to her ‘Robert Galbraith’ novels, which I suspect none of the five people being filmed there not JKR have read, but only as something like a hobby she does when she’s not doing important collaborative Wizarding World work with David Yates, et aliis.

If there is a keeper moment (besides Rowling’s reference to her blonde bombshell look of a decade as “accidental” [!] and “looking like Dolly Parton’s plainer sister”), it was when the interviewer asks why Rowling doesn’t do many interviews. Rowling pauses significantly before offering her rehearsed answer about writers and their energies.

She seemed to choke back the answer, “Have you read any of my books and thought about what I think of the legacy media? People like you?” Or, “Because when I do speak to people like you, I get questions about my life as a single mother, the color of my hair, where I get my ideas, and how often I think of my late mother rather than the artistry and meaning of my novels and screen writing or anything of interest to serious readers…”

Anyway, lemmeno what you think of the trailer and its “revelations.” For a scene by scene breakdown of the trailer without any discussion of the trailer structure or possible meaning for the films, look here. More trailer breakdown, too, on  PotterMore.com, something like the horse’s mouth (Mouth of Sauron?). Tomorrow we’ll go back to unpacking the depths of Lethal White, a novel Rowling wrote herself, with a post by Louise Freeman about a song that belonged on Rowling’s White Horse Playlist. And about Matthew’s desire for revenge on Cormoran…

Forgotten as it seems to be in the media and Potter fandom, Lethal White was published only a week ago. We have plenty of time to look at the latest Warner Brothers teaser droppings about Cimes of Grindelwald, which advertising, despite the supposed “finality” of this trailer, will no doubt continue right through November. We have only just begun to talk about the depths of Lethal White!

We’re in the last days of our countdown to the publication of Strike 4, Lethal White, but I wanted to take a break today to point out something that may have been neglected in the online fine-tooth-combing of everything Crimes of Grindelwald. More on Lethal White in the days ahead, believe me!

There are a flood of ancillary texts (that’s ‘knock off books’) whose authors and publishers hope to catch a ride on the tsunami of publicity and promotions sure to attend the release of the second Fantastic Beasts film this November. The designers of the film’s special effects are surfing this wave, too, of course. Today’s post is a closer look at the cover of MinaLima’s The Archive of Magic: The Film Wizardry of The Crimes of Grindelwald (Harper Design).

The book is not selling very well at present in pre-release: it’s #419,506 on Amazon at this writing; a book I wrote in 2008, just for comparison, is at #327,906. At $50 for a 160 page book, maybe Archive is meant only as a collector’s item or last minute desperation gift for the Potter-phile who has everything. But there’s something in everything MinaLima does that’s worth noting. Here it’s the only thing you can see.

Note that the cover of the MinaLima book on the filming of ‘Crimes of Grindelwald’ features Box 2703 from the movie. We have this still of Tina and Newt just in front of that box. Between the cover and the still, I think it safe to assume the box holds something important.

My guess is that it has something to do with Nicholas Flamel. Three reasons after the jump! [Read more…]