People's Choice
Bollywood Buzz: From Galwan’s Battlefields to Editing Room – A Week in Indian Cinema
Bollywood Buzz: From Galwan’s Battlefields to Editing Room – A Week in Indian Cinema
Studio Team CarryOnHarry, July 22, 2025
The Indian film industry is a dynamic and ever-evolving landscape, a fact underscored by recent developments spanning from high-profile shoots to release date shuffles and even AI-altered climaxes. This week’s news provides a fascinating snapshot of the industry’s multifaceted nature, revealing both its creative ambition and its sometimes-fraught internal dynamics.
The news that Salman Khan’s Battle of Galwan is set to commence shooting in Mumbai, followed by a Ladakh schedule, highlights the industry’s continued interest in stories of national importance and large-scale action. The meticulous set design being undertaken at Mehboob Studio suggests a commitment to visual spectacle, a key ingredient for attracting audiences to theaters. However, the incident involving Akshay Kumar in London, where he reacted angrily to a fan secretly filming him, serves as a reminder of the pressures faced by celebrities and the delicate balance between fame and privacy. His subsequent selfie with the fan adds another layer of complexity to the situation, underscoring the performative aspect of celebrity interactions.
The release date adjustments for Son of Sardar 2 and Param Sundari are commonplace in the film industry, reflecting the strategic considerations involved in maximizing box office potential. Competition, post-production delays, and marketing strategies all play a role in these decisions. More concerning, however, is the reported halt in the Hindi version of Drishyam 3, allegedly due to legal concerns regarding the rights to the story. This underscores the importance of intellectual property rights in the industry and the potential for conflicts to disrupt production schedules.
Sunil Shetty’s comments on the reconciliation between Paresh Rawal and Akshay Kumar, key figures in the Hera Pheri franchise, offer a glimpse into the personal relationships that underpin the industry. While Shetty downplays his role, his encouragement likely contributed to resolving the conflict, paving the way for future collaborations. This highlights the importance of interpersonal dynamics within the industry, where successful partnerships can be highly lucrative.
The box office success of Sayara, starring Ahaan Pandey and Aniyat Padda, is a positive sign for new talent and smaller-budget films. Its impressive performance demonstrates the audience’s willingness to embrace fresh faces and compelling stories. Conversely, the ambitious scale of the planned Ramayana adaptation, with a reported budget of ₹4000 crores and the use of motion capture technology, signifies the industry’s ambition to push technological boundaries and create visually stunning cinematic experiences. The use of such a large budget could either create a new benchmark for Indian films or create a new understanding of risk in the industry.
The controversy surrounding the re-release of Raanjhanaa with an AI-altered climax, without the director’s consent, raises serious ethical questions about artistic integrity. Anand L Rai’s anger is understandable, as it highlights the potential for technology to undermine the creative vision of filmmakers. The success of Diljit Dosanjh’s Sardar Ji 3 in Pakistan, becoming the highest-grossing Indian film in that market, underscores the power of cinema to transcend borders and cultural differences.
Finally, the reopening of Kapil Sharma’s cafe in Canada after a shooting incident is a testament to resilience and the determination to overcome adversity. The fact that they are reopening only 10 days after such a horrific event suggests a powerful refusal to be intimidated. This array of news items presents a complex and compelling picture of the Indian film industry: a world of creative ambition, personal dynamics, technological innovation, and occasional controversy. Ultimately, the industry’s ability to navigate these challenges will determine its continued success and global influence.
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Audiences Are Rating ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ and ‘Resident Evil’ Among 2026’s Hottest Films
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Two 2026 releases, "Resident Evil" and "Spider-Man: Brand New Day," are tied at the top of Rotten Tomatoes’ running Verified Hot list, each pulling in more than 5,000 Verified ratings from ticket-buying audiences, according to the site’s latest update.
Just as Certified Fresh represents critics’ consensus via the Tomatometer, Verified Hot is its audience equivalent, requiring a minimum 90% score on the Popcornmeter using ratings exclusively from Fandango ticket buyers, according to the guide. Rotten Tomatoes introduced the badge to give paying audiences their own equivalent stamp of approval, separate from critical consensus.
Behind the two leaders in the largest-sample tier, "The Odyssey" ranks second with over 5,000 Verified ratings, followed by "Project Hail Mary," "Obsession," "Hoppers" and "The Super Mario Galaxy Movie." Several of these titles also turn up on other year-end and mid-year lists tracking 2026’s most-discussed films, including "The Odyssey," "Project Hail Mary" and "Obsession" among the movies cited as generating the most audience conversation this year.
In the next tier, covering films with 1,000 to 5,000 Verified ratings, "Avengers: Endgame," "Heart of the Beast," "Forgotten Island" and "Practical Magic 2" share the top spot, with "Coyote vs. Acme," "The Invite," a musical performance film featuring Stray Kids and others filling out the rest of the ranking. Rotten Tomatoes notes a third, smaller tier of 250 to 999 ratings exists for titles still building an audience track record, which it describes as newer and more niche releases.
New films earning a 90% Popcornmeter score are added weekly, with placement within each tier based on cumulative Verified rating volume.
Studio CarryOnHarry will be watching whether films lower in the 1,000-to-5,000 tier gain enough ratings to crack the top bracket as the list updates through the rest of 2026.
Read more People’s Choice stories on Studio CarryOnHarry. Reporting via Live News Vault.
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Revisiting Octavia Butler’s “Wild Seed,” the 1980 novel that opens her Patternist series
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Octavia E. Butler’s "Wild Seed," released in 1980, remains one of the author’s most widely read novels decades after its release. It opens Butler’s five-book Patternist cycle, a five-book speculative fiction cycle, and continues to draw new readers and critical attention.
Butler, who died in 2006, is widely regarded as one of the first Black women to gain major recognition in American science fiction, a genre that offered her few peers when she began publishing in the 1970s. Her work is frequently cited within Afrofuturism, the broader cultural movement that uses speculative fiction, technology, and alternate histories to explore the experiences of the African diaspora and to imagine Black futures beyond the constraints of the present.
"Wild Seed" is addresses themes of gender, healing roles, and the experiences of Black women, reflecting the novel’s focus on characters navigating power, transformation, and survival across generations. Readers and reviewers have consistently described it as a character-driven work rather than a plot-heavy one, with its two central figures carrying the novel through sustained psychological and emotional depth. The book is the first in the five-volume Patternist series and has drawn an active readership on platforms like Goodreads, where it holds a strong average rating from tens of thousands of readers.
The novel has also found renewed life in reading groups and community discussions in recent years, often paired with other Afrofuturist or speculative work, a sign of Butler’s lasting pull on readers well outside the genre’s traditional audience.
Studio CarryOnHarry sees "Wild Seed" as a useful entry point for readers curious about Butler’s influence on contemporary speculative fiction, and worth a look for anyone building out an Afrofuturism reading list.
About the Author: An American science fiction writer, one of the best-known among the few African-American women in the field.
[Comment by Tricia Sullivan, on The Guardian][1]:
Octavia E Butler (1947–2006)
> I was teaching in New York when I came across Octavia E Butler’s Kindred in a secondary-school catalogue of novels recommended to support diversity. It caught my attention because Butler was described as a science-fiction writer. I thought I was familiar with science fiction, but I’d never heard of her – nor have a great many other readers, I suspect. For many years, Butler was the sole African-Ameri
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Harry Johal — Entertainment Editor
Harry Johal is the Entertainment Editor at Studio CarryOnHarry, overseeing the newsroom's day-to-day coverage.
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