A Harry Potter prequel about Voldemort has been given the go-ahead

This is not a drill.

Warner Brothers has given the go-ahead for a Harry Potter spin-off about Voldemort's origin story. Tryangle Films, a start-up production company started a crowd-funding page on Kickstarter earlier this year to raise money for Voldemort: Origins Of The Heir, a prequel about Tom Riddle's early life. A trailer for the project then appeared online and clocked up millions of views, according to Cosmopolitan. It's now been announced that Warner Brothers, which produced the Harry Potter films, has given Tryangle permission to make the film. It's only set to be released on Youtube, however, and strictly 'in a nonprofit way'.

"We had a private and confidential discussion with Warner Bros. who contacted us during the period of the crowdfunding campaign," the project's director Gianmaria Pezzato told Polygon.

He said the team at Tryangle was fascinated bye the Dark Lord's backstory.

“We wondered, ‘What made Tom Riddle become Voldemort? What happened in those years, and what really went down at Hogwarts when he came back?’” said Pezzato.

“There are some clues in the books which have not been transposed at all in the movies, but a lot goes unspoken. This is the story we want to tell: The rise of the Dark Lord before Harry Potter and his first demise.”

He went on to say the film follows the heir of Gryffindor, Grisha Mac Laggen, as she tries to stop the emergence of Voldemort. Mac Laggen "suspects trouble when Hepzibah Smith (descendant of the ancient Hufflepuff family) was found murdered in her residence. The case goes cold, but Laggen feels that there’s something wrong, and she believes that Tom Marvolo Riddle is involved somehow," said Pezzato. We can't wait to see how this turns out! Here's the trailer.