Even the Fantastic Beasts Stars Were Shocked by the Idea of Five Movies

Eddie Redmayne and Katherine Waterston are two of the new wizards joining the Harry Potter universe in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and now they’ve addressed J.K. Rowling’s announcement that there will be five films in this series.

“When she said we were doing five, that was news to us … there’s so much that we’re not privy to,” Katherine Waterston told Entertainment Weekly. What Rowling says goes, though, and that’s as it should be. “The things is, it’s [Rowling’s] imagination,” Redmayne explained, and continued:

She has such a passion for it and a specific story that she wants to tell and we get glimpses into that, and as Katherine said, it’s insanely exhilarating when that happens. I think Fantastic Beasts the title and Newt and his creatures are a way into this world, but there’s a much bigger story here about good versus evil that she wants to tell, and you haven’t seen much of it in the trailers and the clips of the film. But it’s really a core of the story that she’s telling and it has an epic, epic quality to it. … So I do see that [Fantastic Beasts] is a macro story that could take more time.

Redmayne, who plays Newt Scamander in the film, is hinting at a larger narrative that Scamander’s story may simply be a way into. Much of the plot of Fantastic Beasts and its numerous sequels is still unknown, but we do know that it will be a prequel to the Harry Potter series set in 1926 New York. The film will be directed by Potter veteran David Yates, and is set to hit theaters on Nov. 18.