
MarketWatch shares that the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is the most pre-ordered audiobook ever … and even better is it features Eddie’s fabulous voice as the narrator!
Mb>Only Harry Potter could turn an encyclopedia into an audiobook best seller
Just how magical is the grip Harry Potter has on Muggle wallets? Consider this: The audiobook edition of “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” was Audible’s most preordered title ever, the company told MarketWatch.
Mind you, this audiobook, which goes on sale Tuesday, is not even a reading of the screenplay of the hit 2016 movie, but rather the alphabetical encyclopedia of magical creatures, from Acromantula to Yeti, on which the film is very loosely based. (It’s as if “Audubon’s Birds of America” suddenly became an audiobook best seller.)
“There are some really great tongue-twister words in here,” said narrator Eddie Redmayne, who reprised his film role as Newt Scamander for the audiobook. “Occasionally, I had to stop recording just because I was incapable of saying the words without either laughing or getting my tongue in a muddle.”
J.K. Rowling’s short, funny magizoology reference book cast an avada kedavra on Lee Child, whose 2016 “Night School” held the prior record for most preordered audiobook, Audible spokeswomen Esther Bochner said, though the Amazon AMZN, -0.03% subsidiary declined to share specific sales figures.
Since being released in November 2015 on Audible, more than 3 million Harry Potter audiobooks have been sold, Bochner said.
See: Amazon’s killer app isn’t Prime; it’s time
The Harry Potter wizarding universe continues to expand to meet the insane demand that will likely extend the franchise across generations the way Disney DIS, -0.09% has managed with the Star Wars and Marvel franchises.
For Harry Potter audiobook fans, the most hoped-for new publication would be a recording of the stage play “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.” Currently an impossible-to-get ticket in London’s West End, the show is slated to head to Broadway in 2018. To date, Rowling and Audible have been mum on whether there would ever be an audiobook version of the play.