What was the title of J.K. Rowling’s first screenplay, released as a 2016 film?

J.K. Rowling’s first screenplay was Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, released as a film in 2016.

The film expanded the Wizarding World beyond Harry Potter and follows Newt Scamander, a magizoologist whose magical creatures escape in New York City. Rowling wrote the screenplay, and David Yates directed the film. It was inspired by the fictional textbook of the same name that appears in the Harry Potter books.

The title can cause confusion because Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them was also published as a 2001 charity companion book credited to the fictional author Newt Scamander. The 2016 movie is not a direct adaptation of that short textbook. Instead, Rowling used its title and fictional author as the starting point for a new story. The film became the first entry in a planned Fantastic Beasts film series.