Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

To Kenzie

Foreword
by David Yates

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
The Original Screenplay

Glossary of Film Terms

Cast & Crew

About the Author

About the Book Design

I’ve worked with many writers, but no one quite as special as Jo. She knows her characters and her universe inside out, she’s one of the most dynamic thinkers
I’ve ever met, and for someone who has enjoyed so much success she is incredibly grounded. Her storytelling is singular, yet she approaches the filmmaking process as producer and screenwriter
with a genuinely collaborative spirit.

I first read
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
in the spring of 2016, a full year and two months before we began shooting the film. The script felt layered, emotional, and
that most precious of things: itself. For a filmmaker it offered many gifts and a huge sandpit in which to play. Whether the thrill of recreating Paris in the late 1920s, wrangling a new collection
of wonderful beasts, or exploring an emotional, multi-stranded story with compelling characters and themes, each day of prep and production was always exciting as well as fun.

Above all, however, it was the characters that captured and beguiled me on that first read; they are timeless, enchanting, intriguing. All of them are being tested to their core, navigating a
world that is becoming ever more complex and dangerous—a world that, however heightened and magical, in some ways echoes our own across time.

David Yates

September 9, 2018

SCENE 1

EXT. NEW YORK, AMERICAN MINISTRY OF MAGIC—1927—NIGHT

AERIAL SHOT of New York and MACUSA building.

SCENE 2

INT. MACUSA BASEMENT, BARE, BLACK-WALLED ROOM—NIGHT

The long-haired, bearded GRINDELWALD sits motionless, magically fixed to a chair. The air shimmers, charged with spells.

ABERNATHY peers in at GRINDELWALD from the corridor.

A baby Chupacabra—part lizard, part homunculus, a blood-sucking creature of the Americas—is chained to GRINDELWALD’S chair.

SCENE 3

INT. MACUSA, CORRIDOR BETWEEN CELLS—SHORTLY AFTER—NIGHT

PRESIDENT SERAPHINA PICQUERY and RUDOLPH SPIELMAN walk at pace toward an ominous-looking door past endless pairs of guards.

SPIELMAN

(Germanic)

. . . you’ll be glad to be rid of him, I expect.

PICQUERY

We’d be more than happy to keep him here in custody.

SPIELMAN

Six months are enough. It’s time for him to answer for his crimes in Europe.

As they reach the door, ABERNATHY turns and acknowledges them.

ABERNATHY

President Picquery, Mr. Spielman, sir. Prisoner is secured and ready to travel.

SPIELMAN and PICQUERY peer into the cell at GRINDELWALD.

SPIELMAN

You’ve thrown everything at him, I see.

PICQUERY

It was necessary. He’s extremely powerful. We’ve had to change his guard three times—he’s very . . . persuasive. So we removed his
tongue.

SCENE 4