Which Harry Potter-related film did J.K. Rowling write as her screenwriting debut?

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them was J.K. Rowling’s screenwriting debut.

Released in 2016, the film was inspired by the fictional Hogwarts textbook of the same name. Rowling wrote the screenplay, making it her first produced screenwriting credit. The story is set in New York in 1926, decades before the main Harry Potter narrative.

The film follows Newt Scamander, a British magizoologist whose magical creatures escape from his case. Eddie Redmayne played Newt, while the cast also included Katherine Waterston, Dan Fogler, Alison Sudol, and Colin Farrell.

The movie began a planned Fantastic Beasts film series. Its title resembles a textbook title inside the Harry Potter world, but the film expands that brief fictional book into an original prequel-era story.