JK Rowling's Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is to shoot in the UK at Warner Bros's complex in Leavesden, Hertfordshire.

The announcement was made by the culture secretary, Sajid Javid, at a creative industries event in London and subsequently confirmed by the Hollywood studio on Thursday. Leavesden is where all eight Harry Potter films were shot and features a permanent tour attraction based on the saga's original sets.

Fantastic Beasts, which Warner Bros and Rowling revealed in September last year, will feature the swashbuckling adventurer Newt Scamander. The title is borrowed from the first-year textbook that Potter uses at Hogwarts in the novel Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Rowling will write her debut screenplay for the film, which is expected to be the first of a trilogy.

Rowling published the Fantastic Beasts "magizoology" compendium in 2001 in aid of Comic Relief. Warner has high hopes for the new saga because the Harry Potter films are the highest-grossing franchise in history, with $7.7bn (£4.6bn) in box-office receipts.

The first Fantastic Beasts film is due in cinemas in November 2016. Director and cast have not yet been publicly revealed.

Fantastic Beasts joins the new Star Wars movie, Episode VII, as well as a number of Marvel Studios comic-book movies in shooting in the UK. Warner Bros Studios Leavesden revealed earlier this week that it is set to expand, with the addition of three new sound-stages and a further 100,000 sq ft of office space to cope with increasing demand from film-makers.