FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM.

Harry Potter’s adventure may have concluded five years ago in 2011, but J.K Rowling’s Wizard World gets extended with this spin-off adventure. Potter’s longest-serving director, David Yates, returns to helm this 1920s-set prequel focusing on an English wizard called Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne), who arrives in New York and accidentally unleashes a magical bag full of extraordinary creatures.

UK Release: 18 November.

CONVICTION.

A new US legal drama is nothing new, but this one stars the UK’s own Hayley Atwell (Agent Carter) as Hayes Morrison, a former ‘First Daughter’, who’s blackmailed into heading up a unit specialising in re-examining cases where a wrongful conviction might have occurred.

UK TV: 2 November, Sky Living.

ARRIVAL.

Having wowed festival-goers over the past few months, Denis Villeneuve’s intelligent science fiction drama becomes available to general audiences. Amy Adams plays a talented linguist recruited by the US military to help communicate with aliens, who have arrived in dozens of spaceships levitating just above the ground in various locations. You can read our early review from the London Film Festival here.

UK Release: 10 November.

THE GRAND TOUR.

Having been fired by the BBC for punching a Top Gear producer in a pique of hungry anger, Jeremy Clarkson’s next project finally arrives. The controversial petrolhead’s brought along his mates, Richard Hammond and James May, for a big-budget globetrotting adventure featuring lots of fast cars and boisterous hijinks. Given the lukewarm reception to Top Gear without this triumvirate, I’m sure this will be a much more palatable alternative for fans. Unfortunately, while a financial no-brainer to partner with Amazon, you have to wonder if most British viewers will even see The Grand Tour.

UK TV: 18 November, Amazon Prime.

BAD SANTA 2.

Tardy sequel to the cult 2003 black comedy Bad Santa, with Willie Stokes (Billy Bob Thornton) returning as a low-level criminal and low-rent department store Father Christmas.

UK Release: 23 November.

ALLIED.

World War II drama from Robert Zemeckis about an intelligence officer working in North Africa (Brad Pitt), who falls in love with a French Resistant fighter (Marion Cotillard) behind enemy lines, only for their relationship to be put under strain when they’re reunited in London.

UK Release: 25 November.