Art & Entertainment
Hari Kondabolu and Senator Manka Dhingra at Tasveer in Person Annual Gala
Well-known writer, stand-up comedian, and host of the recent Netflix show Snack vs Chef, Hari Kondabolu is the keynote speaker at Tasveer Sixth Annual Gala, along with chief guest WA State Sen. Manka Dhingra. At the gala, he will share more about his experiences with Tasveer and its seminal work towards representation of South Asian communities.
The active participation of the South Asian and other intersectional communities is crucial to Tasveer’s sustainability and its success. The funds raised by the community supports filmmakers, advocates, and artists who bring attention to critical social justice issues and give a platform to underrepresented voices and stories within the community.
This year marks Tasveer completing 21 years. With the funds raised, Tasveer will:
Host the largest South Asian film festival, Tasveer South Asian Film Festival (TSAFF) in the country
Award monetary grants and year-long mentorship to independent filmmakers through Tasveer Film Fund
Organize events ranging from Open Mic nights, Book Reads, scriptwriting workshops, and masterclasses for budding storytellers
Provide honorariums to more than 200 artists, filmmakers, and advocates through their events.
Amplify women’s voices (with 43% of women directors in TSAFF) and those of the queer community through consistent representation
Encourage and inculcate political and social activism amongst South Asian youth through Tasveer Youth Collective
Provide fiscal sponsorship to South Asian diaspora films by emerging filmmakers
Hari Kondabolu is a comedian, writer and podcaster based in Brooklyn, New York. His documentary “The Problem with Apu” created a global conversation about race and representation. He also released two comedy albums, “Waiting for 2042” & “Mainstream American Comic” and has performed on many late night shows. He is also a former writer & correspondent on the Chris Rock produced FX show “Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell.”
“My association with Tasveer goes back more than a decade. Today, being invited as a keynote speaker is an honor and feels like a homecoming. I truly believe in Tasveer’s crucial work in supporting the multi-dimensional representation of South Asian artists and under-represented communities. And really look forward to being a part of the Gala,” says Hari Kondabolu.
Also joining many city and state officials (Bellevue City Council members) is the Washington State Senator and Deputy Majority Leader, Manka Dhingra. Senator Dhingra is the first Sikh elected to any state legislature in the United States and has a long history of working for social causes in this region. In 1996, she founded the non-profit organization, Chaya to combat domestic violence against South Asian women.
“On behalf of Tasveer, we extend our heartfelt gratitude to all of our donors, supporters, and community members for their generosity and unwavering support. Their contributions and unflinching endorsement made these 21 years possible. We are excited to host this gala in person this year and are honored to have this one-of-a-kind platform that highlights social justice causes and underrepresented voices.” -Rita Meher, Tasveer Executive Director
The goal is to raise $200,000. The evening will also have a lively performance by the dance company Live2Dance and DJ Kazan. Thank you to Tasveer Gala sponsors: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Himalaya Homes, Inatai Foundation, K&L Gates, Madison Avenue Realty and The Remala Foundation.
Tickets for the event are available at Tasveer website.
Source: Tasveer
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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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