The world of Harry Potter continues to expand in more ways than one. There is the musical, which follows after the events of The Deathly Hallows, and then there’s the upcoming film, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. The prequel will take fans back ’70s prior to the events of Harry Potter, where a young magizoologist named Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) ventures across the ocean to America for an important meeting with an official at the Magical Congress of the United States of America. But when creatures escape from the magical briefcase, it is up to Newt and a No-Maj (America’s version of a muggle) to capture them before things turn catastrophic.

Now Warner Bros. has released a new featurette that helps familiarize ourselves with our protagonist. Check it out below.

With that ever-so-recognizable chime, Harry Potter author and Fantastic Beasts screenwriter J.K. Rowling introduces our hero with a little background on how she writes them.

David Yates, who directed the last four films in the main movie franchise, returns to direct this prequel spinoff. But the main purpose of this featurette is to tell us who Newt is, how he must become the hero, and how his actions pave the way for Harry Potter. We know that his writings would eventually become a textbook that will be used at Hogwarts, so it should be fun to see how it all came together and how Newt’s account would eventually become the textbook.

Rowling likens Newt to some of her other characters featured in the seven previous books that she has written. “My heroes are always people who feel themselves to be set apart, stigmatized, or othered,” the author said. Redmayne tells us that “Newt feels more at home with creatures than he does with human beings.” However, he seems to be more of a reluctant hero than one who is eager to strut his stuff, and must put aside his shyness to become a hero. And perhaps that is what makes the character so interesting.

Here’s the official premise:

“Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” opens in 1926 as Newt Scamander has just completed a global excursion to find and document an extraordinary array of magical creatures. Arriving in New York for a brief stopover, he might have come and gone without incident”¦were it not for a No-Maj (American for Muggle) named Jacob, a misplaced magical case, and the escape of some of Newt’s fantastic beasts, which could spell trouble for both the wizarding and No-Maj worlds.

The film also stars also stars Katherine Waterston, Dan Fogler, Alison Sudol, Ezra Miller, Samantha Morton, Jon Voight, Ron Perlman, Carmen Ejogo, Jenn Murray, Faith Wood-Blagrove, and Colin Farrell. It will be released on November 18th.

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[Source: WB Pictures]