Which J.K. Rowling screenplay introduced the film series Fantastic Beasts?

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them introduced J.K. Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts film series.

Released in 2016, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them was Rowling’s screenwriting debut. The film is set in the wizarding world decades before the Harry Potter story and follows Newt Scamander, a British magizoologist who arrives in 1920s New York with a case of magical creatures.

The title was adapted from the fictional Hogwarts textbook of the same name. Rowling had previously published a charity companion book under that title in 2001, credited to the fictional author Newt Scamander. The film expanded that small in-universe book into a period adventure.

The film began a planned series and was followed by The Crimes of Grindelwald and The Secrets of Dumbledore. Those later titles are sequels, not the work that introduced the film series.