J.K. Rowling wrote the Fantastic Beasts film series, which began with a 2016 film.
The first movie, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, was released in 2016. Rowling wrote the screenplay, and the story follows magizoologist Newt Scamander in 1920s New York. It expands the Wizarding World beyond Harry Potter’s school years and introduces earlier events connected with Albus Dumbledore and Gellert Grindelwald.
The film series is related to Harry Potter but is not an adaptation of one of the seven main novels. Its title echoes a Hogwarts textbook that Rowling originally published as a charity companion book in 2001. The screenplay therefore develops a fictional reference into a separate cinematic story.
The first film was followed by Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald in 2018 and Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore in 2022. Eddie Redmayne played Newt Scamander in all three released films.