J.K. Rowling’s screenplay Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them was published in 2016.
The screenplay was released as a book on 19 November 2016, the same year that the first Fantastic Beasts film reached cinemas. Rowling wrote the screenplay for the film, making it her screenwriting debut. The story is set in the wizarding world but takes place decades before Harry Potter’s school years.
Eddie Redmayne plays Newt Scamander, a magizoologist whose magical creatures escape in 1920s New York. The title echoes a Hogwarts textbook mentioned in the Harry Potter novels, but the screenplay expands that brief fictional reference into a new narrative.
The publication should not be confused with the earlier companion book Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them, originally published in 2001 as a charity text credited to the fictional Newt Scamander. Rowling’s 2016 screenplay is a different work.