What was the first J.K. Rowling screenplay set in the Harry Potter wizarding world?

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them was the first screenplay by J.K. Rowling set in the Harry Potter wizarding world.

The 2016 film was written by Rowling and directed by David Yates, who had directed several later Harry Potter films. Its story follows Newt Scamander, a British magizoologist whose magical creatures escape in 1926 New York City. Eddie Redmayne played Newt in the film.

The title comes from a fictional Hogwarts textbook that appears in the original Harry Potter novels. Rowling’s screenplay expanded that small in-world reference into a new film series set decades before Harry’s school years.

The film was not a direct adaptation of a conventional novel. A companion book titled Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them had been published in 2001 as a charity work, presented as a Hogwarts textbook and credited to the fictional Newt Scamander. The screenplay introduced a different, larger narrative.