Which J.K. Rowling screenplay introduced the wizarding world decades before Harry Potter’s school years?

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them introduced Rowling’s earlier wizarding era through a screenplay set decades before Harry Potter’s school years.

The 2016 film follows Newt Scamander, a magizoologist who arrives in New York in 1926 with a suitcase full of magical creatures. Rowling wrote the screenplay, making it her screenwriting debut. The story expands the wizarding world beyond Hogwarts and places its central conflict in an earlier period of magical history.

The title comes from a fictional Hogwarts textbook mentioned in the Harry Potter novels. Rowling had previously published a short charity book using that title in 2001, but the film is an original narrative rather than a direct adaptation of the textbook’s imaginary contents.

Eddie Redmayne plays Newt Scamander. The film launched a planned series of five films, although only three were released by 2022. Its setting also allowed the series to explore magical institutions and conflicts outside Britain.