J.K. Rowling’s first Fantastic Beasts film was released in 2016.
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them premiered in 2016 as a fantasy film set in the wider wizarding world created by Rowling. It is set decades before the Harry Potter story and follows Newt Scamander, a magizoologist whose magical creatures escape in New York City. Eddie Redmayne played Newt in the film.
Rowling wrote the screenplay, making the project her first produced film screenplay. The movie’s title comes from the Hogwarts textbook Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which appears as a schoolbook in the Harry Potter novels. The film expands that fictional book into a story about its supposed author.
The 2016 release began a film series that later included The Crimes of Grindelwald and The Secrets of Dumbledore. Those films continue the earlier historical storyline rather than adapting the seven Potter novels.