Which screenplay did J.K. Rowling write as a prequel to the Harry Potter film series?
Answer
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
J.K. Rowling wrote the screenplay for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them as a prequel to the Harry Potter film series.
The 2016 film is set in 1926, decades before Harry attends Hogwarts. Its central character is Newt Scamander, a British magizoologist who arrives in New York with a case containing magical creatures. The screenplay expands the wider wizarding world rather than retelling Harry’s school story.
The title comes from a fictional Hogwarts textbook credited to Newt Scamander. Rowling had previously published a short companion book with that title in 2001 for Comic Relief, but the film is an original story rather than a direct adaptation of that textbook’s brief entries.
Fantastic Beasts became the first film in a separate five-film series planned around the earlier history of Albus Dumbledore and Gellert Grindelwald.