Eddie Redmayne to star in Harry Potter spinoff

British actor Eddie Redmayne, winner of a 2014 Oscar for the film “The Theory of Everything,” is to star in the upcoming Harry Potter prequel “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.”

Warner Bros. Pictures confirmed Tuesday in a statement that Redmayne will play the story’s leading character Newt Scamander, a magician tasked with writing a book about magical creatures.

“Eddie Redmayne has emerged as one of today’s most extraordinarily talented and acclaimed actors,” said Greg Silverman, president of creative development and worldwide production at Warner Bros. Pictures. “We are thrilled to welcome him into J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World.”

Scamander is an expert “magizoologist” who on his extensive travels has researched a plethora of magical creatures, studies that will lead him to write the Hogwarts textbook first exposed to the world in “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.”

The movie, set 70 years before the time of the Harry Potter films, will mark Rowling’s debut as a screenwriter, from which will issue a series of magical creatures and mythological characters from Harry Potter’s world of wizardry.

Directing the film will be David Yates, who made the last four pictures of the Harry Potter saga.

Production will be handled by David Heyman, the man behind all eight Potter movies, Steve Kloves, writer of almost all the saga’s screenplays, and Lionel Wigram.

The studio plans the film’s worldwide premiere for November 2016.