JK Rowling Says ‘Fantastic Beasts’ Will Be Stretched Into 5 Movies Somehow

Buckle up, friends – J.K. Rowling has just announced that ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them‘, previously thought to be a trilogy, is actually going to be five movies.

Yes, FIVE. Count ’em.

Five. Not seven. Not three. Five.

(Got a feeling this is going to be the new ‘not a prequel’). https://t.co/ZkjEeeDQjj

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) October 13, 2016

Thank you! (But it’s five). https://t.co/eZZafAt3xN

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) October 13, 2016

5. Five. Cinq. Fünf. Cinco. Cinque. https://t.co/t8UVZMtO8V

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) October 13, 2016

(For those not intimately familiar with Rowling’s Twitter account, she and her followers are now taking the piss, echoing the sentiments of everyone asking if Fantastic Beasts would be a prequel to the Harry Potter movies. Moving on.)

The news came out at a Warner Bros. fan event in London on Thursday. 

“I’m pretty sure that there are going to be five movies, now that I’ve been able to properly plot them out,” said Rowling. “We always knew that there would be more than one.”

And now there’s FIVE.

Obviously there’s some skepticism and backlash to this news, with one fan asking her on Twitter if she thought it was too much.

“I think, when you realise what story we’re *really* telling, you’ll understand that it can’t possibly fit into one movie,” she replied.

Now here are four facts to whet your appetite:

ONE: Director David Yates said that the upcoming films (which hits theatres November 18, by the way) will include a cameo by a young Albus Dumbledore and Gellert Grindelwald, both of whom have been mentioned in the trailers.

TWO: Yates also teased that the second film – which he is also directing, and Rowling is also writing – will be set in another global capital city, i.e. not NYC.

THREE: The film’s plot largely centres around brewing tensions between wizarding folk and Muggles.

FOUR: As we learnt in ‘Deathly Hallows‘, Grindelwald’s ultimate goal was to expose the magical world to the non-magical one, with witches and wizards emerging as the dominant class.

So bearing all that in mind, I present you with this: Could we be seeing an epic WW2 series told from a magical perspective that culminates in Dumbledore defeating Grindelwald in 1945? In which case, HOLY SHIT Rowling is playing the long-game, having dropped that fact in Harry Potter’s first ever ride on the Hogwarts Express in ‘Philosopher’s Stone‘.