Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption JK Rowling: "There were a couple of the Potters and I definitely knew that they needed another year" 
 
 Author JK Rowling says she is tempted to create a "director's cut" of two Harry Potter novels, because she ran out of time to finesse them. 
 
 Rowling, whose first adult novel, The Casual Vacancy, is published on Thursday, said she had deliberately taken her time to write it. 
 
 "There were a couple of the Potters and I definitely knew that they needed another year," she said. 
 
 Her final Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, came out in 2007. 
 
 "I had to write on the run and there were times when it was really tough," she told BBC arts editor Will Gompertz. 
 
 "And I read them, and I think 'Oh God, maybe I'll go back and do a director's cut', I don't know. 
 
 "But you know what, I'm proud I was writing under the conditions under which I was writing, no one will ever know how tough it was at times." 
 
 Emma Watson, who starred as Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter films, said the author was "too hard on herself". 
 
 "I think they [the books] are the way they were meant to be," she told BBC Newsbeat. 
 
 'Not for children' 
 
 Rowling said she wrote her latest novel simply because she "wanted to". It is aimed specifically at an older audience and includes adult themes and swear words. 
 
 "I hope that we've made it really clear that this isn't a book for children," she said. 
 
 Image caption Rowling says The Casual Vacancy is about "slicing through a society with everything that that implies" 
 
 Gompertz revealed in his blog the swearing gave him "a bit of a jolt" when reading the book, "given that she is the world's most famous children's author". 
 
 The novel is centred on the death of Barry Fairbrother, whose unexpected passing shocks the local villagers of Pagford. 
 
 Publishers Little, Brown & Co said: "Pagford is, seemingly, an English idyll, with a cobbled market square and an ancient abbey, but what lies behind the pretty facade is a town at war." 
 
 The company describes the tale as being "blackly comic, thought-provoking and constantly surprising". 
 
 Rowling, who admitted being flattered by Gompertz saying it had "something of Dickens" about it, added: "When I did start writing it I was aware that I was doing a contemporary version of what I love, which is a big, fat 19th Century novel set in a small community. 
 
 "So to an extent - swear words notwithstanding - that is what The Casual Vacancy is. 
 
 "It is a parochial - literally - novel that's looking at slicing through a society with everything that that implies. That's what I wanted to do." 
 
 She added that the huge success of of Harry Potter meant she "had nothing to prove". 
 
 "I certainly don't mean that in an arrogant way," she added, "I certainly don't mean that I think I can't improve as a writer. 
 
 "But Harry Potter truly liberated me in the sense that there's only one reason to write, for me - if I genuinely have something I want to say, and I want to publish it." 
 
 Rowling said she will judge the success of this book by "speaking to readers". 
 
 When the "hype became insane" with the latter Potter books, she described it as "a monster that was out of control" , adding that "speaking to readers really brought you back to what it should be about". 
 
 Her next novel is likely to be for younger readers, although she was keen not to commit herself to anything. 
 
 Image caption Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 was the biggest film of 2011 at the UK box office 
 
 "I think it very likely that the next thing I publish will be for kids," she said. 
 
 "I have a children's book that I really like. It's for slightly younger children than the Potter books." 
 
 However, the author admitted she was "proud" of The Casual Vacancy. 
 
 "I like it, and if you can say that, however nervous you are on publication day, you're streets ahead of the game," she said. 
 
 "Because to put out something you're not that happy with or that you think 'God, I wish I'd had another year to rework it' - and I have been in that position - is very different." 
 
 'Odd thing' about Leveson 
 
 More than 450 million copies of Rowling's seven Potter books have been sold worldwide. 
 
 The novels, about a boy wizard who survives the attack that kills his parents, became a worldwide phenomenon and were turned into eight blockbuster films starring Daniel Radcliffe. 
 
 Rowling spoke of the downside of her success, which led to her giving evidence at the recent Leveson Inquiry into media ethics. 
 
 "It was a big deal giving evidence to Leveson, because you're in that paradoxical position of trying to stick up for your privacy whilst slightly invading your own privacy," she said, adding she had to think "long and hard" about what to tell the inquiry. 
 
 "There were a couple of things that didn't go into the statement," she said. 
 
 "Because even though they represented some of the worst things that had happened to me at the hand of the press, or my family, I would have been invading my own privacy quite seriously to talk about them. So that's the odd thing about an inquiry like this." ||||| Photo: Warner Bros. 
 
 Though it was written by J. K. Rowling herself, 2016’s Harry Potter expansion franchise Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them was a weak attempt to recapture the magic of her earlier stories. Gone were the engaging original characters, replaced by a bunch of empty vessels. And the mythology that the author wove so deftly in the background of her Potter books was now foregrounded, which simply meant that we cared even less about what happened to whom and why. Though directed by David Yates (who made the final four Harry Potter movies, which includes three of the best ones), Fantastic Beasts practically drowned in self-seriousness; the Potter films had earned their portent across a whole series. The best thing about Fantastic Beasts was Colin Farrell’s dogged security chief Percival Graves, and Yates and Rowling pretty much added insult to injury when, in the picture’s closing moments, they turned him into Johnny Depp’s shape-shifting archvillain Gellert Grindelwald. 
 
 At least, with all that turgid setup out of the way, you’d think that the second entry in this new series, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, would settle into telling us an actual story and finding ways to make us care for its characters. Well, tough luck. The new movie has even more setup than the first! 
 
 The year is 1927. Grindelwald, having staged a daring escape from a flying coach over the skies of London in the opening scenes, is pursuing Credence Barebone (Ezra Miller), “the boy with a malediction” — an obscurial, with the power of turning his suppressed rage into a massive, fiery, beastlike force. Grindelwald apparently wants some kind of segregation between Muggles and Wizards, with himself as pure-bred potentate. Our hero, Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne), a nerdy, sensitive introvert with a suitcase full of magical creatures, is entrusted by Professor Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law) to travel to Paris and prevent the villainous dark wizard from harnessing Credence’s powers. Meanwhile, Newt’s beloved Porpentina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston), is already hot on Credence’s tail. 
 
 That all sounds simple enough, but the film presents us with scene after scene of narrative throat-clearing, dithering meetings and exchanges in which we are repeatedly given information on the importance of stopping Grindelwald, and warned of the ghastly evil of his intentions. There’s more mythology, and flashbacks to long-ago relationships and alliances, and introductions of more characters. (Here’s a pet peeve: If you’re going to make a prequel, why load it up with more flashbacks?) Amid all this exposition and setup, nobody really seems to do anything. 
 
 There’s also speculation about Credence’s true nature. The boy, raised by adoptive parents, wants to know where he really comes from. And here, you can see why Rowling might be so interested in establishing all this backstory. She’s getting at something about bloodlines, and families. Porpentina’s sister Queenie (Alison Sudol) is also along for the adventure. Newt’s brother Theseus (Callum Turner) is a Department of Magical Enforcement official. Theseus is engaged to Leta Lestrange (Zoe Kravitz), whose siblings we learn more about later. Of course, the Potter stories had a lot of siblings and genetic histories as well, but there, family and blood were a kind of destiny; now, Rowling seems to push against that a bit. I could say more, but I don’t want to give too much away. 
 
 The earlier tales had to do a lot of establishing, too. But they also found ways to absorb us in the particulars of the protagonists’ lives, especially through the ingenious structure of following the characters through their school years. So the kids grew up and had crushes, and dances, and clubs and tournaments and mini-mysteries and dramas … And somewhere along the way, we got to know them and love them. (Some of us quicker than others, admittedly. I was too old for the books, and it took me several films before I was hooked, so maybe there’s hope for me yet with these Fantastic Beasts pictures.) 
 
 But even if The Crimes of Grindelwald had a better script, I’m not sure much could have been done with it. Depp, once such a charismatic actor, mostly sleepwalks through his part, doing his usual tired goth weirdo bit — which is odd, since we’re told constantly that Grindelwald is an extremely persuasive figure, with a forked, seductive tongue, and this dude does not seem like he could convincingly order room service if he tried. Redmayne continues to overdo Newt’s hems and haws and mumbles and stumbles; his concave whimpering isn’t cute, or funny, or sad, or even interesting — it’s irritating. Waterston, one of the best actors of her generation, remains just glum and stone-faced throughout. Only Miller, playing the conflicted, lost soul at the heart of the story, does what he can with his character’s overwhelming desire to belong. 
 
 So, The Crimes of Grindelwald is a tiresome slog — but it ends well. After all that, Grindelwald has a rally in Paris for all his potential converts, and he talks of bloodlines and birthrights. There’s a vaguely Trumpian echo to it all. (“Let’s just hear what he has to say,” a character in the audience says.) Depp still isn’t particularly forceful, or charming, but Yates and Rowling put on a fascinating, impressive light show, as Grindelwald conjures up massive, magical projections of what will happen to the world’s future if the wizards don’t rule. And for a few seconds, the bad guy manages to be surprisingly convincing. It’s enough to make me wonder if this series might still have a few decent tricks left up its sleeve. We’ll see. This movie’s a bust, but I’ll let myself remain hopeful.
– JK Rowling, apparently not adjusting so well to post-Harry Potter life in the eight years since the last book dropped, has released yet another new story on her Pottermore website—a biography of sorts of one of the author's alleged "favorite off-stage characters" from the Series That Shall Apparently Never Die. Yes, Celestina Warbeck, ye olde "Singing Sorceress," makes her actual debut—complete with an actual music video of her smash hit, "You Stole My Cauldron, but You Can’t Have My Heart" (it's in the gallery, you're welcome)—after what BuzzFeed calls "throwaway references to her in three Harry Potter books." "I always imagined her to resemble Shirley Bassey in both looks and style," Rowling writes on Today, which has the whole thing, complete with references to Celestina's "Flighty Aphrodite tour."