Castium Revelio: Twi’Leks, Daemons, and Other Creature Features

by · September 2, 2019

While we’d argue (and WIN!) that the Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts franchises boast the most magical, mystical creatures around, our wizarding world alumni have made their way into plenty of other projects that feature a few fascinating beings of their own. A few brand-new ones have surfaced this week: Nat Tena will be playing a brilliant purple alien in a new Star Wars spinoff series from Disney, and Helen McCrory will be voicing one of His Dark Materials‘s animal daemons! Plus, Timothy Spall discusses life as a common garden rat, and we’ve got new trailers for projects from the actors behind our favorite werewolf and Animagus, David Thewlis and Gary Oldman, in this week’s Casting News. We don’t care if you’re on two legs or four, let’s get wild! Castium Revelio!

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Harry Potter Cast & Crew

MuggleNet has been keeping you up to date on all the latest Little Women news ahead of the film's Christmas Day release, and director Greta Gerwig sat down recently with Entertainment Weekly to discuss hiring Emma Watson (Hermione Granger) for the role of Meg March.

Gerwig said she thought Watson would be perfect for the role due to her tireless work to promote gender equality and that the actress "would always bring so much to the conversation" during filming due to her extensive research.

She is all in, not just as an actor but as a mind. To me, [Watson] embodies everything that I was interested in, in terms of who the March women were. She's just smart. She's on multi-governmental organisations that speak to the U.N., and she's so thoughtful and present. She is way out there, trying to do everything she can. In terms of what she did with the character, she has so much open-heartedness and so much love combined with that much intelligence, it's heartbreaking and potent. Because she's absolutely herself with understanding the struggle of who that character is.

We let you know last month that filming was set to begin on The Dig, starring Ralph Fiennes (Lord Voldemort), but the Netflix film has undergone a few changes since then. The World War II–era story of the widow and the archaeologist who discover Sutton Hoo originally had Fiennes in the role of Basil Brown and Nicole Kidman pegged for Edith Pretty. The Hollywood Reporter now says Carey Mulligan (The Great Gatsby) will take over the role of Pretty. The movie starts shooting this month.

And for your No Time to Die update of the week, one of James Bond's iconic silver Aston Martin DB5s was spotted during filming in Matera, Italy, with extensive damage to its side. We can just hear M - Fiennes's character - now, telling 007 to stop being so bloody reckless.

Gary Oldman's (Sirius Black) latest picture, The Laundromat, is currently rounding the festival circuit, but Variety announced last week that Netflix has revealed its release plans for that film and a few others. The Laundromat will arrive in theaters September 27 ahead of an October 18 streaming release on Netflix. The King, starring Robert Pattinson (Cedric Diggory), will hit cinemas October 11 and Netflix November 1. We've also got a brand-new The Laundromat trailer for you this week, and we have to say, we can't wait to see Oldman in this role.

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile, the embattled video game Squadron 42, for which Oldman is among a star-studded voice cast, has been delayed once again, Eurogamer reports. The game's beta version had been slated for a second-quarter 2020 release but has now been bumped into the third, meaning we likely won't see it until summer 2020. Squadron 42 has been in development for nearly seven years after raising upwards of $230 million from backers. Since you've likely forgotten about it altogether in that amount of time, here's a 2018 trailer to jog your memory.

 

 

 

 

Also appearing at festivals around the globe is Guest of Honour, starring David Thewlis (Remus Lupin), and the Hollywood Reporter has offered us a full synopsis of the film, along with an exclusive clip. You can check out both below.

David Thewlis plays Jim, an all-powerful food inspector who doesn't hesitate to make or break local establishments with his powerful restaurant ratings. His family dynamic begins to impact his work, as he makes weekly prison visits to see his daughter, Veronica (Laysla De Oliveira), a high-school music teacher who was punished for a hoax on the school bus driver that went too far. As Jim tries to get Veronica an early release, what he doesn't know is that she is punishing herself for different actions from her past. Their inability to connect as they protect their own secrets yields unexpected results. Veronica confides in a local priest, Father Greg (Luke Wilson), who may ultimately be able to unlock the secret to their tangled father-daughter relationship.

 

 

Another Thewlis film, Eternal Beauty, wil be screened October 2--13 at the BFI London Film Festival, along with several other pictures featuring wizarding world alumni. They include American Airlines Gala feature The King, Cult Gala feature The Lighthouse, and Waiting for the Barbarians, all starring Pattinson and the latter also starring Johnny Depp (Gellert Grindelwald, Fantastic Beasts) and Harry Melling (Dudley Dursley); Debate Gala feature Official Secrets, starring Fiennes and Rhys Ifans (Xenophilius Lovegood); Headline Gala feature Hope Gap, starring Bill Nighy (Rufus Scrimgeour); Mayor of London Gala feature The Aeronauts, starring Eddie Redmayne (Newt Scamander, Fantastic Beasts) and written by Jack Thorne (writer, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child); A White, White Day, starring Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson (Grimmson, Fantastic Beasts); The Song of Names, starring Richard Bremmer (Voldemort, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone); and a remastered version of 1980's The Elephant Man, starring Sir John Hurt (Garrick Ollivander). You can purchase tickets for the festival online.

Timothy Spall (Peter Pettigrew) has been doing plenty of press of late for Mrs Lowry & Son, and the actor sat down recently with Metro to discuss that film and a few others you may have heard of.

Metro: You've played a painter several times, you've played Churchill a couple of times - which occupation do you think you've had the most on screen?

Spall: Apart from being a rat?

Metro: Oh yes, so Peter Pettigrew in the 'Harry Potter' films...

Spall: And I was a rat in 'Chicken Run', so I think a rat's my thing. Make of it what you will!

Be they rodents or otherwise, Spall tells the Scotsman that investing in his characters is his favorite part of acting.

I'm fascinated by what makes humanity tick. The character is supreme and dictates what you do and what resources you have. The only thing you can use is your imagination, and if that person exists, the facts about them. And you can fuse your emotion with theirs somehow... by symbiosis, connection, assimilation, and synthesis, use your soul and experience and attach it to somebody else's.

Spall is currently working on a new independent film titled The Obscure Life of the Grand Duke of Corsica, in which he'll portray Alfred Rott. We'll let you know as soon as we see a release date!

A cantankerous and brilliant architect, Alfred, embarks on a highly unusual commission in Malta for a man who calls himself 'The Grand Duke of Corsica.' An epidemic hits the island and all must flee, but Alfred remains to finish the job.

If you didn't celebrate International Dog Day last week, everyone on your Facebook feed probably did, and the Downton Abbey gang got in on the act as well. You can follow Benji, who plays Grantham family dog Teo, on a little behind-the-scenes jaunt below.

 

 

Part of the allure of the Downton world is the period wardrobe, and we can't wait to see what Dame Maggie Smith (Minerva McGonagall) and Imelda Staunton (Dolores Umbridge) will be wearing in the film! In the meantime, you can check out a selection of the antique tiaras - or, y'know, diadems - the ladies will be donning for the royal visit on Vogue India's website.

We also have a beautiful new piece of art to show you from Staunton's upcoming Maleficent: Mistress of Evil.

 

 

The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance has finally made its premiere, and we're still mildly hyperventilating. The series - which stars Jason Isaacs (Lucius Malfoy), Helena Bonham Carter (Bellatrix Lestrange), Ralph Ineson (Amycus Carrow), Toby Jones (voice of Dobby), Ólafur Darri Ólafsson (Skender, Fantastic Beasts), and Natalie Dormer (narrator of the Harry Potter: A History of Magic audiobook) - is as beautifully immersive as 1982's The Dark Crystal. And if you live in the London area, you can venture even closer to the land of Thra with BFI Southbank's The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Exhibition. The exhibition features character studies, original puppets and props, and recreated sets, and it is scheduled to run through September 6. Tickets are free, but booking is recommended.

The fervor surrounding Netflix's cancellation of Isaacs' The OA, meanwhile, is still going strong, and the actor spoke about it last week to New York Live. While Isaacs has expressed immense appreciation for fans fighting to have the show reinstated, after reports surfaced of a woman engaging in a hunger strike, he also urged people not to harm themselves in the process.

 

 

 

 

 

Despite everyone's best efforts, it's beginning to look less likely that we'll ever see the series resolved. Variety reports that while the option existed to potentially wrap things up in film form, the showrunners ultimately decided a two-hour movie wouldn't be sufficient to summarize the three seasons they intended to follow Season 2.

As for the passion surrounding the entire ordeal, Isaacs told SyFy Wire last week that he loves the devotion of all of the fandoms with which he's been associated. You can read his full interview on SyFy's site.

It's been a privilege to be around the 'Star Trek' fans, and the 'Harry Potter' fans, and the 'OA' fans, and the 'Star Wars' fans from 'Star Wars Rebels', and these are passionate communities. It always boils down to a person in a room, a man, or a woman, or a team of them sitting in a room and dreaming up stories because the technology may change, but we've always gathered as human beings to be told stories, originally around the campfire, because, in many ways, stories are what bind us together as human beings. Our ability to imagine outside ourselves is maybe what separates us from the animals.

It was announced last week that Helen McCrory (Narcissa Malfoy) will be joining the vocal cast of Jack Thorne's His Dark Materials as the voice of one of the series daemons. McCrory will portray snow leopard Stelmaria, daemon of James McAvoy's Lord Asriel, and she described the process to Metro in a rather humorous way last week.

I'm a snow leopard. It consisted of me standing in a studio in Soho and looking at my snow leopardness and doing a vaguely snow leopardy voice... and then being told to stop doing that and just read the lines. But it looks fantastic.

We previously let you know that Season 3 of Audience's Mr. Mercedes - starring Brendan Gleeson (Mad-Eye Moody) as Bill Hodges - would premiere September 10 in the United States, but we now have a United Kingdom premiere date for you as well. The new season will debut on StarzPlay on September 19. Below, you can check out a new behind-the-scenes video featuring Gleeson - who offers insight into delving into one's character enough to know how they would react to various situations - along with the UK trailer and art.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzgj1DCsXs8

 

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9fEKKt1ZE4

 

 

 

 

 

If you're a dual Harry Potter and Star Wars fan, then get ready to squee over this one: Nat Tena (Nymphadora Tonks) will be portraying a gorgeous purple Twi'lek in Disney Plus's upcoming series The Mandalorian. The series is set after the fall of the Empire and before the emergence of the First Order. It's set to premiere November 12, and you can check out a still image of Tena's character and the trailer she shared last week on Twitter below.

 

 

Remember Game of Thrones? Those of you with a really recent sense of nostalgia (like us) will want to pick up copies of two new books coming out just in time for the holiday shopping season: The Photography of Game of Thrones and The Art of Game of Thrones. The books are available for preorder now, with a November 5 release date for the photography volume and the art volume in the US and a November 14 date for the photography and art books in the UK. And since it's been so long - and so many of them, you know, died - let's do a quick refresher on the Potter alumni in GoT. Deep breath: Tena; Ineson; Jim Broadbent (Horace Slughorn); David Bradley (Argus Filch); Ciarán Hinds (Aberforth Dumbledore); Freddie Stroma (Cormac McLaggen); Julian Glover (voice of Aragog); Michelle Fairley (Mrs. Granger); Edward Tudor-Pole (Mr. Borgin); Sally Mortemore (Madam Pince); Bronson Webb (Draco's not-Crabbe-or-Goyle sidekick in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban); Nicholas Blane (Bob, Arthur Weasley's coworker in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix); and Ian Whyte (body of Madame Maxime in full-body shots). Yep, that's right, we went deep.

Deadline Hollywood reports that Shirley Henderson (Moaning Myrtle) and Katie Leung (Cho Chang) will be starring together in the new BBC One thriller The Nest. The five-part drama is currently in development. There's currently no release date or character information for Henderson and Leung, but we'll keep an eye out, and you can read a synopsis of the show below!

Dan (Martin Compston) and Emily (Sophie Rundle) are crazy about each other. They live in a huge house in a beautiful location just outside Glasgow and want for nothing. All that's missing is a baby - and they've been trying for years. Through a chance encounter, they meet Kaya (Mirren Mack), an 18-year-old from the other side of the city, whose life is as precarious as theirs is comfortable. When Kaya agrees to carry their baby, it feels like they were meant to meet, but was it really by chance? Who is Kaya, and what has brought her to this couple? Can the dreams of Kaya, Emily, and Dan be fulfilled, or have all three embarked on a relationship of mutually assured destruction?

We're still more than a little bummed that the release of Disney's Cruella, starring Emma Stone and Dame Emma Thompson (Sybill Trelawney), has been pushed back to nearly two years from now, but based on this first look at Stone in the titular role, it'll be worth the wait. Shades of Helena Bonham Carter, anyone?

 

 

Thompson's Men in Black: International, meanwhile, may have been ill received in theaters, but if you missed it and would like to form your own opinion, you can pick up your Blu-ray copy Tuesday from Amazon US and on October 21 from Amazon UK. Both are currently available for preorder.

Miriam Margolyes (Pomona Sprout) will be performing snippets from her Olivier Award–winning one-woman show, Dickens' Woman, during the Dickensian Festival in Malton, England, the Gazette and Herald reports. Margolyes will appear December 21 and will afterward participate in an audience Q&A, hosted by Lucinda Hawksley, great-great-great-granddaughter of Charles Dickens. Tickets are already on sale for the event, and Margolyes says she is excited to share her love of the author.

I am delighted to return to Malton again this year. I fell in love with Dickens at school and would like to appeal to children, young people, and adults alike to come and enjoy the spirit of 'A Christmas Carol' - Dickens is the best. Once you are hooked by his words, his books will enrich you over a lifetime. The evening is going to be enormous fun.

The recent D23 Expo, hosted by the official Disney fan club, revealed plenty of information about a wide variety of projects, including Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, starring Domhnall Gleeson (Bill Weasley). Not only did we get a new movie poster out of the deal, but we also got a new trailer! Score!

 

 

 

 

Gleeson spoke with the Irish Independent last week about acting alongside family (aside from his and his father Brendan's appearances in Harry Potter, the two and Domhnall's brother Brian have starred together in Psychic and Walworth Farce, while Domhnall and Brian both featured in Mother!) and famous faces like those in Mother! and The Kitchen.

You want to work with good people. Good people tend to make you better, whether you're supporting them or leading them. [...] I've worked with some of the best people, and it seems to me like my work gets better if the people I'm working with are great. The ego benefits from being able to say to people, 'I'm doing scenes with Elisabeth Moss next week.'

Gleeson also sat down with Dark Horizons to discuss a variety of topics, including the moment he feels everything changed for him as an actor.

After I got the part in 'Harry Potter', and before anyone knew that Bill Weasley had two lines, in that year, I got to audition for stuff I wouldn't have otherwise got to audition for. I was cast in 'Anna Karenina', and I think that was a very big change in my life because it was a romantic part. I had never been offered anyone like that, and nobody had ever thought of me that way before.

He also contemplated why he seems to be termed an "unlikely leading man" in so many reviews of his work. Let the record show that we at MuggleNet find Gleeson unbelievably charming in every possible way.

The way I look, I guess? That would be my best guess. I don't know... I'm OK with it, I can't look any other way, there's nothing else I can do. I'm not self-deprecating, I'm not a horror show or anything like that. But I also know that... ugh, how do you talk about it and not be self-deprecating? I wasn't the one the girls were running over to go talk to at, well, at any point of my life. You know what I mean? Maybe that's why: because leading men are expected to be very handsome or whatever. Or maybe it's because of the way I act? Maybe it's because I'm a little bit withdrawn? It could be f***ing anything. Maybe it's because I'm Irish.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge took the one-woman show that inspired her hit series Fleabag back to the London stage last week, and cast from both Fleabag and Killing Eve turned out to support her. You can check out a photo of Fiona Shaw (Petunia Dursley), who features in both series, below.

 

We've been keeping you apprised of the progress of Bill Nighy's Sometimes Always Never as it's made its way around the UK, and the film has now made the jump to the festival circuit in North America. As such, a new US trailer has been released, and you can view that and a pair of film posters for the poignant movie below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We've also been giving you the details on England's celebrations of the 50th anniversary of Monty Python's Flying Circus, and i reports that a collection of never-before-seen photos from axed sketches will soon be published in the Radio Times Official Guide to Monty Python at 50. You can view two of the photos, featuring John Cleese (Nearly Headless Nick), below.

 

 

David Heyman's (Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts producer) next producing project, Clickbait, has been greenlighted by Netflix, the Hollywood Reporter says. The eight-episode series will explore the ways in which social media fuels people's most dangerous impulses and how the gap is narrowing between people's virtual and real-life personas. The show will be shot in Melbourne, Australia, and we'll let you know as soon as we see a release date!

Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts, recently hosted John Williams Film Night, and John Williams (composer, first three Harry Potter films) delighted audiences by directing selections from some of his most famous scores. He also briefly discussed the upcoming Star Wars film, for which he said he has already recorded 100 minutes of music and will be recording an additional 40. Williams also teased that fans will love the ending. We're sure we will too - once we've finished profusely weeping.

 

 

 

MuggleNet has been giving you the scoop on Stephen Fry's (narrator of the UK Harry Potter audiobooks) latest film, Tomorrow, and we have a new trailer for you this week! Fry portrays Chris in the film, which will premiere September 27 in the UK.

 

 

 

 

Fry is also taking his wildly successful one-man show, Mythos, on tour in the UK, and you can find dates and tickets on his website. Fry recently served as presenter at the Dave's Edinburgh Comedy Awards to cap the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and the Daily Mail reports he was surprised with a cake in honor of his 62nd birthday. The cake featured an image of Fry and his fellow members of the Cambridge Footlights - including Dame Emma Thompson - winning the festival's top comedy award in 1981.

When I first came here in 1979, I was overwhelmed by the Fringe. I was in three plays that year, and the next year, I wrote a play to bring to the Fringe and did six shows a day. The third year, I came with the Cambridge Footlights, with Hugh Laurie and Emma Thompson, and won the first-ever Perrier Award in 1981. The Fringe means everything to me. I wouldn't be here without it.

Fantastic Beasts Cast & Crew

Aaron Sorkin's long-delayed film The Trial of the Chicago 7, starring Eddie Redmayne (Newt Scamander), is finally back on track, Deadline Hollywood reports. Paramount has purchased US distribution rights for the movie, and Cross Creek has joined Amblin Pictures to co-finance and produce. Production is now expected to begin in October, and we'll let you know how it's coming along!

Redmayne fans in Canada will also want to keep an eye out for the actor at the Toronto International Film Festival, where his picture The Aeronauts will be screening. AT&T On Location will host its popular Variety Studio, a portrait and video studio for A-list actors, September 6--9 at Le Germain Hotel, and Redmayne and Robert Pattinson (Cedric Diggory, Harry Potter) will be among the guests. Redmayne and Aeronauts costar Felicity Jones, meanwhile, were in attendance this weekend at the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado and took time out for a scenic photo!

 

 

 

Johnny Depp (Gellert Grindelwald) is featured in a new 60-second spot for Dior's Sauvage fragrance titled "We Are the Land," but the ad campaign has recently come under fire. Filmed in southern Utah, the spot includes Native American war dancer Canku One Star, Da'Naxa'xw Nation member Tanaya Beatty, Southern Ute Indian Tribe member Hanley Frost, and Depp playing a guitar riff from the song "Rumble" by Shawnee guitar legend Link Wray. Dior said it collaborated with Americans for Indian Opportunity, a Native American advocacy group, on the commercial to ensure it respected indigenous cultures, and Depp himself was adopted by the Comanche tribe in 2012, but social media still wasn't pleased. Many took exception to the use of Native Americans in an ad for a fragrance that translates to "savage" - though the more common French translation of "sauvage" is "wild" - prompting Dior to delete the video and references to the campaign from many of its social media postings.

We let you know previously that Ezra Miller (Credence Barebone) was a go for The Flash, and now, director Andy Muschietti has confirmed his involvement as well. SyFy Wire says Muschietti not only said the movie would be his next project after wrapping It Chapter 2 but also that he's excited about the tale the film will tell.

What captivated me about 'The Flash' is the human drama in it, the human feelings and emotions that play in the drama. It's going to be fun, too. I can't promise that there will be any horror, really, but it's a beautiful human story.

The Capture, the new BBC series starring Callum Turner (Theseus Scamander) and Holliday Grainger (Robin Ellacott, C.B. Strike), makes its premiere Tuesday, and Turner spoke with This Is Local London last week about portraying a soldier caught up in controversy over his actions both in Afghanistan and at home. Turner said he spoke with former soldiers in preparation for the part, who discussed the difficulties involved in transitioning from the war zone to the homefront.

The brotherhood is so deep and entrenched that you can't get it when you come home. [...] No one wanted to go home for Christmas because, one, they don't want to leave their brothers behind, and two, they don't want to come home and everyone's like, 'How are you? What's going on? What's it like? Are you OK?' They just want to be back out doing the things that they're used to.

 

Alison Sudol (Queenie Goldstein) is among the star-studded cast of a new film about a Vietnam War hero. The Last Full Measure tells the story of William Pitsenbarger, an Air Force medic who saved more than 60 men during one of the most brutal battles of the war, sacrificing himself in the process. Sudol portrays Tara Huffman in the movie, and you can view a few images from filming and the movie poster below. The Air Force Museum Foundation will hold a preview of the film at its museum on Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio on September 19, and tickets for that are available online. The movie will premiere in theaters nationwide on October 25.

Variety reports that Colin Farrell (Percival Graves) has started a new production company with his sister and manager Claudine Farrell and The Favourite producer Lee Magiday. Farrell has also selected The Ruin as the first project for Chapel Place Productions, an Irish crime drama based on the novel of the same name by Dervla McTiernan. There's no word yet on the cast - or whether Farrell will be among it - but we'll keep you posted, and you can read the synopsis below.

'The Ruin' tells the story of police officer Cormac Reilly, who discovers two neglected children in a crumbling house in Galway, their mother dead upstairs from an overdose. Twenty years later, when another body is found, Reilly is drawn back to the cold case that has haunted his career, uncovering shocking secrets about police corruption and abuses of the church, and questioning who among his colleagues he can trust.

Season 10 of The Walking Dead - starring Dan Fogler (Jacob Kowalski) and Samantha Morton (Mary Lou Barebone) - is on the horizon, and AMC has released a new poster and teaser, "Silence the Whispers," for the show, which you can check out below.

 

 

 

Morton, as we let you know a few weeks ago, also recently appeared on Kathy Burke's All Woman series on Channel 4 in the UK. In her episode, Morton talked to Burke about how she struggled as a single mother after the birth of her first child in 2000, despite having been nominated for an Oscar the year before for Sweet and Lowdown.

I did always want kids, but I was always scared of it. It was so overwhelming, I took the first year off. I remember being Oscar nominated and signing on. I had no money because Woody Allen doesn't pay. I spent all my 'Band of Gold' money on the deposit for my flat, do you know what I mean? I struggled.

 

 

Cursed Child Cast & Crew

We let you know in the Harry Potter portion of Casting News that Helen McCrory (Narcissa Malfoy) had signed on to the voice cast of Jack Thorne's (writer, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child) upcoming HBO and BBC series His Dark Materials, and we also have a new trailer for you this week! The series will debut this autumn.

 

 

 

That’ll do it for another week of MuggleNet’s Casting News! Which of the many trailers above was your favorite? Let us know in the comments, and check back next week for another update on your wizarding world favorites!