Alfonso Cuaron, the director of Gravity, has dismissed rumours linking him to the Harry Potter spin-off Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, saying that he will not be returning to the Harry Potter franchise, Digital Spy reported.

The Oscar-winning filmmaker, who directed Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, had become a favourite to direct the big screen take on the new project.

The 54-page book Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them was published in 2001 and featured in the Harry Potter series as one of the Hogwarts textbooks.

However, Cuaron has now denied any involvement, telling Spanish news agency EFE: "It was a very beautiful experience for me. I have a lot of love for that universe and I tremendously admire JK Rowling, but today, for the present, projects based around lots of visual effects don't attract me.

"I'm coming out of a five-year process of doing visual effects and now I sort of want to clean my palate of that a little bit."

David Heyman will produce the film, which will be about a "magizoologist" named Newt Scamander.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is set for release on November 18, 2016.