It wasn’t until Dumbledore died that Harry Potter realised he didn’t know the elderly wizard quite as well as he thought. Throughout Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows, the Boy Who Lived learned that the Hogwarts headmaster had something of a tumultuous past – and now we’re about to see it unfold. Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald is introducing a younger Albus to the Wizarding World saga, with Jude Law donning Dumbledore’s dapper duds. It’s a performance which looks set to show us a new side to the beloved character – and Empire has an exclusive new image, as seen in the upcoming issue, of the wizard reflecting upon himself in the Mirror of Erised.
Potter fans will know the Mirror as a key device in The Philosopher’s Stone – an artifact that reveals the deepest desire of whoever looks into it. Harry saw the parents he never knew. Young Dumbledore, if the Fantastic Beasts trailers are anything to go by, sees Gellert Grindelwald – his former friend-slash-maybe-more who’s become an evil wizard-supremacist. That complex relationship looks set to be a major reason why Dumbledore dispatches Newt Scamander to track Grindelwald down, instead of going after him himself.
“Jo [Rowling] told me that in some ways Dumbledore thinks of himself as a beast because of things he’s done in the past, and he knows therefore that Newt [as a beast-lover] will forgive him,” Law tells Empire in the November issue. Here’s another exclusive image – this one an on-set pic showing Eddie Redmayne, Jude Law, and director David Yates alongside some charming classic Routemaster buses.
Read plenty more about Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald – the return to Hogwarts, the younger Dumbledore, Newt’s mission and more – when the new Empire hits newsstands on Thursday 4 October. Also included is a bonus magazine telling the complete making of the Harry Potter saga, with classic Empire features from each film and brand new interviews with all four directors. Oh, and you get the next issue of Pilot TV in there too. Pick up the pack in shops, or order online here{
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