J.K. Rowling’s screenplay Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them was released as a film in 2016.
The film premiered in New York City on 10 November 2016 and was released widely later that month. It stars Eddie Redmayne as Newt Scamander, a British magizoologist whose magical creatures escape in 1920s New York. The story is set decades before the Harry Potter novels.
Rowling wrote the screenplay, making it her screenwriting debut. The film was inspired by the fictional Hogwarts textbook Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which Rowling had published as a charity tie-in book in 2001. The movie is not a direct adaptation of that short textbook; it expands its fictional author and creature-lore into a new narrative.
The film launched a planned series of Wizarding World stories. Its later sequels were released in 2018 and 2022.