Fantastic beasts was originally planned to be a 5 movie series but because it's performed/been reviewed so awfully they apparently wrote FB3 to be a possible ending so they wouldn't go ahead with 4&5... not sure if their plan's been confirmed though either way it's gonna go
It would be very generous to say the FB films are mediocre. They've really squandered a great opportunity to expand on the original stories. It's a shame.
It is most certainly the adapted manual of the HP series. In this timeline I refer to pieces of work belonging to the Wizarding World, so are the Fantastic Beasts saga films (as noted in the disclaimer) but not the textbook or even the Tales of Beedle the Bard.
The last fantastic beast movie (Still haven't watched it and refuse to do so) really should have been titled "The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore" or something similar.
Maybe a bit too much time.
It seems like there are 3 add-on movie cash-grabs (prequels):
"Fantastic Beasts" and the...
-where to find them
-the crimes of Grindelwald
-the secrets of Dumbledore
then they added another 2 movies to this, tbd:
-untitled
-untitled
I don't know what the Cursed Child is. Maybe that was the broadway play.
Is that all more-or-less correct?