Crimes of Grindelwald: DVD 7 Minutes?

As you can see to the left, ‘Univers Harry Potter,’ a French fan site has tweeted the scene coupee or deleted scenes we’ll be seeing in the DVD of Crimes of Grindelwald coming out in February, 2019, as a download and in March as a disc. These ten scenes may or may not be the extra ‘seven minutes’ of running time this version is reported to have; usually a Deleted Scenes’ package is a DVD ‘extra’ that is separate from the running film. Whether the cut scenes are integrated or not, they will provide us with a much better idea of what the actual shooting script was, i.e., what Rowling wrote and her collaborators agreed to shoot before their editing the daylights out of her story in the cutting room, because none of these scenes appear in the published Original Screenplay. This screenplay-book is with important exceptions (black vs blue Grindelwald fiendfyre, etc.) mostly the film-as-cut transcript.

So what have we got?

It looks like we’re getting two scenes from the end of the first film as starters, those depicting Credence’s survival of the attack from the MACUSA Aurors in the NYC subway and his boarding the boat to Europe, perhaps in the company of Circus Arcana. David Heyman told us about those scenes soon after the first movie was released.

The next eight scenes are: ‘Newt’s Basement,’ ‘Ballroom Dance,’ ‘Tina and Skender,’ ‘Murmuration,’ ‘Newt and Jacob walk to Yusuf Kama’s,’ Nagini and Credence in an Alley,’ and ‘Dumbledore and McGonagall.’

We already have a scene in ‘Newt’s Basement,’ but it seemed to have been shoe-horned in to provide us with a Niffler set-up to pay-off at the finish and to introduce Newt’s menagerie and devoted helper. I hope we get a better idea of why these scenes were introduced in the revealed parts that were deleted; if not, we’ll have to assume the Kelpie will return in FB3 or FB4.

‘Ballroom Dance’ was featured in the trailers and promises to give us a better idea of Leta Lestrange’s internal struggles vis a vis her feelings for Newt and Theseus and her possible role in the Grindelwald-Dumbledore conflict.

‘Tina and Skender’ promises an extended confrontation between the MACUSA Auror and the owner of Circus Arcana. All we got in the film was a short exchange about Credence in scene 45.

The next four scenes? No ideas, really. I don’t recall pictures of them in the trailers or mention of them in interviews with the players and film makers. Check out the list of the deleted scenes we know about and ask yourself: why won’t they give us these scenes that they shot from Rowling’s shooting script?

To which scenes, you might add one more: the twitter account ‘Fantastic Beasts Film Series’ tells us that the book Crimes of Grindelwald Movie Magic says “297 wands were stolen from the shop of wandmaker Cosme Acajor during the film. Could this be another deleted scene? Is that why we’ve seen the inside of the shop but not on-screen?” (Hat tip to Kelly for the deleted scenes tip and the tweet news.)

I’m guessing Fantastic Fandom is going wild with speculation about ‘Murmuration,’ et cetera. I think I can wait until the downloadable DVD is available. But feel free to share your thoughts about the deleted scenes and the bizarreness of not being able to get an honest copy of the shooting script, the Rowling text for Crimes of Grindelwald.