Fantastic Beasts: Which city is Newt Scamander going to next?

If there’s anything we know about J.K. Rowling and how she writes, it’s that she tends to have a master plan for everything. It turns out her approach to the Fantastic Beasts film series is no different.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Fantastic Beasts director David Yates confirmed that each of the five movies in the series will be set in a different city and that Rowling has already divulged the location of the third to them.

“It’s very exciting,” Yates said. “This is a global story, ultimately. And given that there’s a global audience for this, it’s all the more delightful to take the story to different parts of the world.”

So with Fantastic Beasts going on tour, we decided to come up with a few ideas for where it could go next.

We’ll warn you, not all of them are serious. But hey, we reckon they’re still more credible than Johnny Depp’s Grindelwald performance.

Rome — La Dolce Leta

Set in beautiful historic Rome, La Dolce Leta is where we find more out about Newt’s first love, Leta Lestrange.

Perhaps it’s the city where she plans to marry Newt’s brother Theseus. Newt, lovelorn and sad, looks for solace in the fantastic beasts native to Italy, only to be distracted once more by the forces of evil trapped in Johnny Depp’s wig.

Maybe David Yates will get a chance to experiment with form in this one, giving us an episodic approach to telling Newt’s story. Whether the audience likes it is clearly not a problem, and maybe, in a headline-making departure from tradition, he’ll shoot the whole thing in black and white.

It’ll be the most stylish wizarding world to hit the screen since the first Fantastic Beasts, when Newt’s beautiful coat put Harry’s one blue shirt to shame.

Las Vegas– Fear and Lethifolds in Las Vegas

This one should be easy for Depp, since he starred in the original, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

High on power and wizarding narcotics (which would actually explain a lot about Depp’s acting choices in the first film), Grindelwald goes on a rampage around Las Vegas and we get to see what wizarding casinos look like. Finally!

Newt is also in Vegas, taking a break from fighting evil, upset by the recent marriage of his first love to his brother, but he ends up feeling even more like a fish out of water amongst the neon lights and showgirls.

So when notable childless tycoons start inexplicably dying in the city, with their money being donated to a mysterious benefactor, Newt begins to investigate.

It’s not long before Newt finds out that Grindelwald and his army of Lethifolds are behind it and once more, Newt finds himself in a battle against the greatest Dark Wizard of all time (well, pre-1980s at least).

If you think this all sounds like nonsense, you’d be right, but hear me out: Nifflers let loose on the slot machines. That’s got to be worth the ticket price alone, hasn’t it?

Los Angeles — Red Cap without a Cause

“You’re tearing me apart!” screams the Red Cap, as it stares, repulsed, at its beautiful reflection, enhanced by the Beautification Potion thrown at him by our hero Newt Scamander. CGI James Dean looks on, inspired.

Newt and the gang find themselves in 1940s Hollywood, where Grindelwald is filming a guest role in a new film. Rich and powerful now, thanks to his exploits in Vegas, and with the public unaware of the very real threat he poses to their existence, he wins over legions of new followers and wields his influence across the world through the medium of cinema. Maybe mind control is involved.

Newt and Tina attempt to thwart Grindelwald’s plans for world domination through Hollywood, but Newt’s suitcase derails their progress again as a Red Cap escapes, and starts trying to lure unsuspecting aspiring film stars to their deaths.

It ends, predictably, in a massive showdown at the Griffith Observatory, and the bright lights of Hollywood form the final credits. Grindelwald is declared Box Office Poison and retires from acting (please).

Nuremberg — Judgment in Nurmengard

Okay, this one is actually serious. Since the rise of Grindelwald appears to roughly mirror that of Adolf Hitler, their defeat even happening in the same year, a trip to Germany seems fairly likely for Fantastic Beasts.

Grindelwald is widely assumed to be German, though there is no actual canonical evidence of this, and, as EW points out, the name of Grindelwald’s prison, Nurmengard, also sounds a lot like Nuremberg, the German city where the Nazis were put on trial after the war.

Since this is where Grindelwald eventually ends up, perhaps Germany will be the location of Fantastic Beasts: The Courtroom Drama. Don’t hold your hopes out for this, however. The wizarding world has a history of sending people to prison without a trial.

#JusticeForSirius.

London — Four Weddings and a Flobberworm

Newt Scamander returns to London, and we return to a familiarly British world of witchcraft and wizardry. With Grindelwald hopefully defeated in the fourth film, if not earlier, we can finally have the magical romantic comedy we truly deserve.

Like Hugh Grant in Four Weddings and a Funeral, Newt is also a socially awkward but sweet, posh boy who happens to be in love with an American girl.

Four weddings ensue, including Queenie and Jacob’s, before Newt and Tina finally get together and kiss in the rain, but instead of a funeral, there’s a shoehorned chase through an exaggeratedly Dickensian London, in search of a wayward Flobberworm which has consumed an energy potion and is growing at an alarming rate.

Tina and Newt manage to track the Flobberworm down before it can slime the city (don’t ask me about the details, I’m an ideas woman!) and they confess their love to one another whilst a version of Love Is All Around plays softly in the distance. Working title: Beasts Are All Around. Bill Nighy, as young Rufus Scrimgeour, sings it.

Roll the credits!

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