I've worked with many writers, but no one quite as special as Jo. She knows her characters and her universe inside out, she's one of the most dynamic thinkers I've ever met, and for someone who has enjoyed so much success she is incredibly grounded. Her storytelling is singular, yet she approaches the filmmaking process as producer and screenwriter with a genuinely collaborative spirit.

I first read Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald in the spring of 2016, a full year and two months before we began shooting the film. The script felt layered, emotional and that most precious of things: itself. For a filmmaker it offered many gifts and a huge sandpit in which to play. Whether the thrill of recreating Paris in the late 1920s, wrangling a new collection of wonderful beasts, or exploring an emotional, multi-stranded story with compelling characters and themes, each day of prep and production was always exciting as well as fun.

Above all, however, it was the characters that captured and beguiled me on that first read; they are timeless, enchanting, intriguing. All of them are being tested to their core, navigating a world that is becoming ever more complex and dangerous-a world that, however heightened and magical, in some ways echoes our own across time.

David Yates

9 September 2018