Art & Entertainment
SoCal Production Company to Host Inaugural Female Filmmaker Meetup
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Temecula, CA, February 06, 2023 –(CarryOnHarry.com)– Footlight Studios, a women-helmed production company based out of the Inland Empire, announced yesterday its first Female Filmmaker Meetup (FFM). The FFM seeks to build a community of women-identifying and gender nonbinary filmmakers with focus outside of the LA area. The Footlights – the female filmmakers behind Footlight Studios – believe that all of Southern California is rich with female talent in all areas of storytelling and aim to make a positive change in the creative industry.
While resources for filmmakers are more widely available in the LA area, it dwindles the further ventured outside of the 30-mile studio zone – an area defined by a 30-mile (48 km) radius of “Hollywood” used by the American entertainment industry to determine employee benefits for film-work done within the zone. This generally leaves filmmakers outside of the zone just out of arms reach from resources, opportunities, and mentorship. Female Filmmakers often feel this the most as despite desire and talent, only 25% of behind-the-scenes roles on big US movies are held by women, and just 17% of directors and writers are female, according to a 2021 study.
Footlight Studios aims to grow those numbers by hosting the FFM monthly so women in the entertainment industry in all of Southern California can collaborate, share resources, attend trainings, and create a support system. The Female Filmmaker Meetup is free and takes place on February 22, 2023 at 7pm at Luke’s On Front in Old Town Temecula. RSVP available at https://footlightffm.eventbrite.com
“We know first hand that gender parity is a big problem in the creative industries. And often, inaction is enhanced by an overwhelming feeling of not knowing where to begin.” -Footlights
“Female filmmakers don’t always know where to start, what resources are available, and often lack a community of female filmmakers and opportunities from more established storytellers to truly excel, when outside of the 30-mile zone. All of Southern California is flush with incredible talent from all of its corners and we aim to unify.”
This event comes on the heels of the 48 Hour Film Project’s announcement that Footlight Studios made the top 15 internationally of the YES WE CANNES challenge – a best of the best competition for all of the city winners of the 48 Hours Film Project. If chosen on March 18th at the Filmapalooza 2023 awards ceremony in LA, Footlight Studios’ film “Stealing Time” will be screening at the Short Film Corner in Festival de Cannes in May.
About the Footlights – Footlight Studios is a women-helmed production company that puts female storytellers at the forefront – in front and behind the camera – in pivotal and essential roles. Its Executive Producers are Vanessa Silva, Heather Hentila, Chelsea Gray & Ainsley Strachan, who have been working together in the scope of film, series, video, and picture production since 2014. The Footlights’ goal is to make an inclusive, safe, and professional space for storytellers, regardless of experience, with a focus on female creatives.
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"The Mummy," the 2017 Tom Cruise action-horror film widely regarded as among the largest theatrical failures in his filmography, has emerged as one of Prime Video’s top-performing films, according to reports tracking the platform’s charts. One report placed the film at the 10th spot on Prime Video’s top movies list.
The film was meant to launch Universal’s "Dark Universe," a planned shared cinematic world built around the studio’s classic monster properties. That plan collapsed after "The Mummy" opened to poor reviews and underwhelming domestic box office, and no further Dark Universe films followed.
The streaming resurgence comes as Cruise’s own on-screen monster-movie history draws fresh attention: reports note the film is being rediscovered by viewers nearly a decade after its theatrical run, arriving on Prime Video after what one report described as an underwhelming box office performance at the time. Cruise starred as Nick Morton alongside Russell Crowe, Annabelle Wallis, and Sofia Boutella, who played the title character.
It isn’t clear what’s driving the renewed interest, whether algorithmic promotion, nostalgia, or simple curiosity about a film best remembered for its failed franchise ambitions. Prime Video has not issued a statement explaining the title’s chart position, and no viewership numbers have been made public.
The film’s climb echoes a broader pattern: other theatrical disappointments, including a 2020s Gerard Butler action film, have found similar second lives on streaming platforms long after their box office runs ended.
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Art & Entertainment
Netflix’s October 2026 Slate: ‘East of Eden’ Adaptation, Ben Affleck Thriller, ‘Diplomat’ Season 4
Balle Balle Radio™ Entertainment Desk
Netflix’s October 2026 lineup centers on a handful of high-profile originals: Florence Pugh leads the cast in this new adaptation of the classic Steinbeck novel, Ben Affleck and Gillian Anderson star in this political thriller, and "The Diplomat," an Emmy-nominated drama, returns for season four.
The month’s release calendar, detailed in an industry preview, spans more than twenty titles across scripted drama, documentary, anime, reality and international programming, reflecting Netflix’s now-standard approach of pairing a few marquee originals with a steady stream of licensed catalog titles and global-market series aimed at different audience segments.
The Steinbeck adaptation, a limited series titled "East of Eden," casts Pugh as Cathy Ames and arrives October 1 as one of the platform’s more literary bets of the fall. It lands alongside a wave of licensed films that same day, including "Ad Astra," "The Devil Wears Prada," "The Sixth Sense," "Pearl Harbor" and multiple seasons of "NCIS" — the kind of familiar-title bulk that typically pads a month’s new-content count alongside the originals.
October 9 brings "Animals," a political thriller starring Affleck and Anderson about a mayoral candidate and his wife drawn into dangerous territory after their son’s kidnapping, according to the preview and a trailer that has circulated separately. The same week, October 8, brings "Below," a six-episode supernatural thriller starring Josh Hartnett set in a coastal town terrorized by something in the water — a project Netflix has also been promoting through its own trailer release.
Tyler Perry returns October 2 with "Doing Life," a romantic drama starring Naomi Baker and Jay Reeves. It will be Perry’s eighth feature made for Netflix, following titles including "A Fall from Grace," "A Jazzman’s Blues" and "Mea Culpa," continuing a production relationship between Perry and the platform that dates back several years.
Keri Russell reprises her role in "The Diplomat" season four on October 15, continuing the well-received original series. Also on the documentary side: "Lorne," director Morgan Neville’s look at "Saturday Night Live" creator Lorne Michaels, featuring interviews with Tina Fey, Conan O’Brien, Maya Rudolph and Chris Rock, out October 5, and "Schumacher ’94 — The Birth of a Legend," chronicling Michael Schumacher’s 1994 Formula 1 title run, out October 2.
The rest of the slate leans international and genre-specific: a Korean fantasy-horror series ("Dead-End Job"), a German psychological thriller ("The Trap"), a Filipino horror-mystery ("Balaraw: Blood Island"), a Polish biographical drama about rock musician Jan Borysewicz ("Less of a Stranger"), and returning anime and reality titles including "Blue Box" season two and "Love Village" season three.
Netflix has not published an official release calendar for the month as of this writing; scheduling for later-October titles beyond October 15 was not detailed in the available preview.
Studio CarryOnHarry Perspective
Literary adaptations and prestige limited series represent a deliberate bet by streaming platforms that quality and cultural weight still matter to subscribers—that not everyone optimizes for quantity alone. This taps into a deeper hunger: the desire to feel like a viewing choice was *earned* rather than merely convenient, especially when a book like "East of Eden" carries decades of classroom authority and critical standing.
In practice, this strategy appears most valuable at moments of subscriber churn or price increases. A household genuinely torn between services may stay for a prestige drama they can discuss at work or defend to skeptical family members—"we’re watching the Steinbeck adaptation"—in ways a fourth reality dating show cannot match. Awards nominations amplify this effect: an Emmy or Golden Globe nomination becomes free marketing that whispers "this matters."
The constraint here is that prestige does not automatically translate to viewership at scale. A critically adored limited series may underperform the analytics of a mid-tier reality show, making it harder to justify the cost to shareholders. Netflix’s preview itself suggests these titles anchor a broader, more eclectic slate—they’re not the whole strategy, just the visible crown jewel.
The most useful way to interpret this may be not as Netflix suddenly becoming a literary platform, but as a company recognizing that different subscriber segments value different legitimacy markers. A Florence Pugh adaptation and a Tyler Perry romantic drama coexist because they’re solving different retention problems for different viewers.
From the Editor — Harry Johal
"That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings." — F. Scott Fitzgerald
I was scrolling through release schedules on my phone this morning—the kind of thing you do while your coffee cools—when I landed on Florence Pugh cast as Cathy Ames. "East of Eden" on Netflix in October. And Fitzgerald’s line came to mind: "You discover that your longings are universal longings."
It stopped me. Because what Netflix is really doing here, underneath all the slate announcements and subscriber retention math, is banking on exactly that discovery. They’re not just releasing a Steinbeck adaptation. They’re releasing permission—permission to sit with a story that millions of readers before you sat with, to feel what they felt, to ask the same questions about ambition and corruption and family that Steinbeck asked seventy years ago.
That’s the real hunger. Not for more content. For confirmation that what moves you isn’t private or small. That your longing to understand cruelty, or redemption, or the weight of a name—these aren’t quirks. They’re human. Universal.
A prestige adaptation doesn’t guarantee viewership. The analytics don’t always justify the cost. But it does something subtler: it reminds people that they’re not alone in what they want to watch, what they want to feel, what they want to *mean* by choosing one story over another. In a world that treats everything as convenience, that reminder matters more than most things Netflix will release that month. Maybe more than Netflix knows.
Read more People’s Choice stories on Studio CarryOnHarry. Reporting via Live News Vault.
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