Art & Entertainment
Female Screenwriter Breaks Into Hollywood from Florida
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Castle Rock, CO, December 29, 2022 –(CarryOnHarry.com)– After ten years navigating the world of independent publishing, local writer Jaimie Engle took a huge risk with a monster payoff. In 2021, she officially paused her publishing house, geared toward upper elementary and middle grade books, to pursue a career in screenwriting, a profession comprised less than 30% by women. She wrote and sold her first feature film, Just Jake, a holiday romantic comedy in June 2022 to True Brand Entertainment’s Executive Producer Brian Bird. The film, shot in Colorado Springs, CO, will release on UpTV Faith & Family Network and Super Chanel Heart & Home in 2023.
“When I was a little girl, I recorded The Wizard of Oz and wrote down all the dialogue,” shared Engle, who began writing short stories in third grade. “At the time, I was fascinated with films, watching the same ones on repeat, with a dream to work in the movie business someday. I never thought I would see that dream come true!”
Just Jake is an uplifting story about a country music singer (played by Rob Mayes) who returns home after major writer’s block, falls back in love with his high school sweetheart (played by Brittany Bristow), and together they rediscover love by making music. The film is directed by Brandon Clark.
Engle sold the book rights to Vinspire Publishing and completed the novelization for a publication release on August 29, 2023. The book follows the storyline in Engle’s original script and can be added to reader’s Goodreads shelves prior to launch.
“Once the script is purchased, it’s out of my hands as far as the final product,” shared Engle, regarding the novelization. “It was important for me to tell my story, so keeping the book rights and selling those allowed me to stay true to my version. After filming starts, the story always changes. Financial restrictions, sets, actors, and many other stipulations go into the actual production that don’t exist in the writer’s imagination. I’m the architect, but the filmmakers are the builders and artisans that bring the story to life.”
Since writing Just Jake, Engle has completed 6 feature films and 3 television shows, which have all been optioned and are in various stages of development and pre-production. She speaks at conventions and schools on writing in film, books, television, and comics, weaving practical advice with experience.
“I love inspiring other people to reach for their dreams,” shared Engle, who spent the past ten years speaking to students about social issues and the power of words. “My books are steppingstones to reach kids and discuss social issues like bullying, self-esteem, and voice, both in life and literature. I also love speaking to writers of all levels at conventions and conferences, in person and virtually. Lots of people have given me tools along the way and believed in me. It’s a great feeling and honor to give that back.”
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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.
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