Editor's Choice
Gondhal Wins India’s Oscar Slot After Dhurandhar Garners Just 4 Jury Votes
Balle Balle Radio™ Entertainment Desk
The Film Federation of India’s 14-member jury gave Ranveer Singh’s action drama "Dhurandhar" four votes that selects the country’s official entry for the Academy Awards, according to jury member Vivek Vaswani. "Gondhal," a Marathi-language film, was selected over it.
Each year, the Film Federation of India assembles a jury to select one film as India’s official submission for the Best International Feature category at the Oscars. The selection has long drawn debate in the industry, since a jury vote often overrides box office performance or star power in choosing which film gets submitted.
Vaswani said according to reports, the jury determined that "Dhurandhar" failed to sufficiently satisfy the selection criteria for Oscar submissions, according to reports of his comments. The distribution of the remaining ten votes was not disclosed by Vaswani, and the Federation has not issued a separate public statement breaking down the jury’s full deliberations beyond what Vaswani has said.
"Dhurandhar" stars Ranveer Singh and has been one of the more talked-about Hindi releases of the year. "Gondhal" is a Marathi-language film that will now go forward as India’s official Oscar submission.
Studio CarryOnHarry will be watching whether the Federation releases a fuller account of the jury’s reasoning, since a single member’s explanation is not the same as an official breakdown of the vote.
Read more People’s Choice stories on Studio CarryOnHarry. Reporting via Live News Vault.
Press Releases at Studio CarryOnHarry
Related Posts
Audiences Are Rating ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ and ‘Resident Evil’ Among 2026’s Hottest Films
Balle Balle Radio™ Entertainment Desk Two 2026 releases, "Resident Evil" and "Spider-Man: Brand New Day," are tied at the top…
Revisiting Octavia Butler’s “Wild Seed,” the 1980 novel that opens her Patternist series
Balle Balle Radio™ Entertainment Desk Octavia E. Butler's "Wild Seed," released in 1980, remains one of the author's most widely…
How The Odyssey Pushed Nolan Into Cinema’s Billion-Dollar Elite
How The Odyssey Pushed Nolan Into Cinema's Billion-Dollar Elite Studio CarryOnHarry Entertainment Desk | 13 October 2026 The Odyssey Rewrites…
Hema Malini Turns 78: The Actress Who Played Twins and Won Only Once for It
Balle Balle Radio™ Entertainment Desk Hema Malini turns 78 on 16 October 2026, having been born on the same date…
Bollywood Loses a Titan: Patekar Dies, State Funeral Confirmed
Director Anees Bazmee breaks silence on Nana Patekar's death, calling it unbearable. Read the full story on India's cinema legend's…
CSIFF26 Showcases Diverse Caribbean Voices Through Six Nominated Films This October
Conch Shell International Film Festival returns to Queens October 9-11 with six Best Film nominees exploring Caribbean and diaspora filmmaking.
Editor's Choice
Audiences Are Rating ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ and ‘Resident Evil’ Among 2026’s Hottest Films
Balle Balle Radio™ Entertainment Desk
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.
Press Releases at Studio CarryOnHarry
Related Posts
Revisiting Octavia Butler’s “Wild Seed,” the 1980 novel that opens her Patternist series
Balle Balle Radio™ Entertainment Desk Octavia E. Butler's "Wild Seed," released in 1980, remains one of the author's most widely…
How The Odyssey Pushed Nolan Into Cinema’s Billion-Dollar Elite
How The Odyssey Pushed Nolan Into Cinema's Billion-Dollar Elite Studio CarryOnHarry Entertainment Desk | 13 October 2026 The Odyssey Rewrites…
Hema Malini Turns 78: The Actress Who Played Twins and Won Only Once for It
Balle Balle Radio™ Entertainment Desk Hema Malini turns 78 on 16 October 2026, having been born on the same date…
Bollywood Loses a Titan: Patekar Dies, State Funeral Confirmed
Director Anees Bazmee breaks silence on Nana Patekar's death, calling it unbearable. Read the full story on India's cinema legend's…
CSIFF26 Showcases Diverse Caribbean Voices Through Six Nominated Films This October
Conch Shell International Film Festival returns to Queens October 9-11 with six Best Film nominees exploring Caribbean and diaspora filmmaking.
AFI Movie Club Celebrates Tod Browning’s ‘Dracula’ as a Landmark of Horror Cinema
AFI Movie Club spotlights Tod Browning's 1931 'Dracula' starring Bela Lugosi, the film that launched Universal's Monster franchise and defined…
Editor's Choice
Revisiting Octavia Butler’s “Wild Seed,” the 1980 novel that opens her Patternist series
Balle Balle Radio™ Entertainment Desk
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
Read more People’s Choice stories on Studio CarryOnHarry. Reporting via Live News Vault.
Are you an author with a new release? We’re always looking for books to cover and authors to interview — tell us about yours here.
Press Releases at Studio CarryOnHarry
Harry Johal — Entertainment Editor
Harry Johal is the Entertainment Editor at Studio CarryOnHarry, overseeing the newsroom's day-to-day coverage.
Related Posts
Audiences Are Rating ‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ and ‘Resident Evil’ Among 2026’s Hottest Films
Balle Balle Radio™ Entertainment Desk Two 2026 releases, "Resident Evil" and "Spider-Man: Brand New Day," are tied at the top…
How The Odyssey Pushed Nolan Into Cinema’s Billion-Dollar Elite
How The Odyssey Pushed Nolan Into Cinema's Billion-Dollar Elite Studio CarryOnHarry Entertainment Desk | 13 October 2026 The Odyssey Rewrites…
Hema Malini Turns 78: The Actress Who Played Twins and Won Only Once for It
Balle Balle Radio™ Entertainment Desk Hema Malini turns 78 on 16 October 2026, having been born on the same date…
Bollywood Loses a Titan: Patekar Dies, State Funeral Confirmed
Director Anees Bazmee breaks silence on Nana Patekar's death, calling it unbearable. Read the full story on India's cinema legend's…
CSIFF26 Showcases Diverse Caribbean Voices Through Six Nominated Films This October
Conch Shell International Film Festival returns to Queens October 9-11 with six Best Film nominees exploring Caribbean and diaspora filmmaking.
AFI Movie Club Celebrates Tod Browning’s ‘Dracula’ as a Landmark of Horror Cinema
AFI Movie Club spotlights Tod Browning's 1931 'Dracula' starring Bela Lugosi, the film that launched Universal's Monster franchise and defined…
-
Books3 days agoArmy Veteran’s New Novel “Sherry Lynn” Follows Soldiers Branded Traitors on a Years-Long Journey Home
-
Books6 days agoNavy Chaplain’s New Book Recounts COVID-Era Vaccine Mandate Discharges
-
Books2 days agoPennsylvania Teacher Writes Debut Book on Recognizing and Recovering from Scams
-
Books5 days agoEconomist Who Converted to Christianity at 84 Publishes Book Applying Analytical Rigor to Faith
-
Books4 days agoNurse-Turned-Author Meggan Barrett Draws on 20 Years at the Bedside for New Memoir “Barn Side or Seaside”
-
Books2 days agoRetired Ohio Educator Myrna Sanner Publishes Case for Classical Education in New Book