Which Harry Potter spin-off film was J.K. Rowling’s screenwriting debut?
Answer
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them was J.K. Rowling’s screenwriting debut.
The 2016 film was written by Rowling and directed by David Yates. It expands the wizarding setting beyond Harry Potter by following magizoologist Newt Scamander in 1920s New York. Eddie Redmayne plays Newt, while the story introduces characters and conflicts connected to the wider magical world.
The film’s title comes from Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, a fictional Hogwarts textbook that Rowling also published as a charity companion book in 2001. The film is not a direct adaptation of that short textbook; it uses the book’s credited author as a character and builds a new screenplay around him.
The movie launched a planned film series and was followed by The Crimes of Grindelwald in 2018 and The Secrets of Dumbledore in 2022.