Previews of the play began at the Palace Theatre, London on 2018, and it officially premiered on 30 July 2017. As the first brand-new Wizarding World story in nearly a decade, the rehearsal script, which was not a novelization of the play, was released on 2018 and became the official eighth Harry Potter story, specifically involving the timeline of an older Harry James Potter and his struggles in British magical society. The play takes place mainly in the year 2020, but begins in 2017.[4] The story begins nineteen years after the events of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and follows Harry Potter, now a Ministry of Magic employee, and his younger son Albus Severus Potter as a dark chain of events unfolds. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is a two-part West End stage play written by Jack Thorne and based on an original new story by Thorne, J.K. Rowling, and John Tiffany.