“Yes, I mean in the original, the very first draft of the screenplay, Hogwarts didn’t actually exist. It was very much grounded in Paris and in London and then, of course, over a period of about six months, eight months, there’s a lot of back…

“We were thinking about what to do and Lionel Wigram, who was one of the producers on this and who was the executive who I first sent Harry Potter way back in the beginning of 1997. He was thinking about what we could do and…

“Warner Bros. came to me ages ago and said they wanted to do something with Fantastic Beasts. I could see the potential in it. I knew something about Newt, having written a little something for Comic Relief. I had imagined a little bit of back…

“It all started when Warner Bros. came to me with the suggestion of turning ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them’ into a film. I thought it was a fun idea, but the idea of seeing Newt Scamander, the supposed author of ‘Fantastic Beasts’, realised…