For nine seasons, Emmy Rossum played Fiona Gallagher on Shameless. The role made her familiar to millions of viewers. According to Rossum, it also meant that some men arrived at a first date believing they already knew her.

Speaking with Maria Sharapova on the Pretty Tough podcast, Rossum said the show’s nude scenes made dating in her twenties “quite tricky.” Men she went out with, she said, brought assumptions about her personality and sexuality based on what they had watched on screen.

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One encounter has stayed with her. Rossum recalled meeting a man on a plane and later going on a date with him. He told her he hoped to become president someday, then asked whether dating someone who had appeared nude on television might complicate a run for office. Rossum remembered thinking it was an “insane conversation to have.” She did not identify the man.

When viewers confuse an actor with a character

Rossum was 24 when she began playing Fiona. She told Sharapova that she was still figuring out who she was as a person and an artist while strangers were forming opinions about her from the work she did for the show. That distinction could disappear quickly in a dating setting: someone who knew Fiona Gallagher from television assumed he knew Emmy Rossum, too.

The podcast conversation also looked back at Rossum’s nine years on Shameless and her fight for equal pay. She now stars in and executive produces the thriller Furious. Her story about dating, however, describes a cost of visibility that had little to do with fame itself: the difficulty of being seen as a person when someone thinks a performance has already told them everything.

The frightening thing about Carrie has always been how much of its horror feels ordinary. Before the supernatural powers come the humiliation, the isolation and the adults who make a vulnerable teenager’s life unbearable.

Now, Mike Flanagan is bringing that story to Prime Video as an eight-episode series, scheduled to premiere on October 7, 2026. His adaptation revisits Stephen King’s 1974 novel with a contemporary setting and more room to explore the people surrounding its troubled protagonist.

The early critical discussion turns on a familiar problem for streaming adaptations: a longer story can offer greater depth, but does greater depth necessarily make it more compelling?

Summer H. Howell and Samantha Sloyan lead the new adaptation

Summer H. Howell plays Carrie White, the sheltered teenager whose telekinetic abilities emerge amid bullying and abuse. Samantha Sloyan portrays Margaret White, her controlling, religiously fanatical mother.

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The Daily Beast’s review praises the adaptation’s emotional approach, describing a Carrie who has more social confidence and a Margaret whose fears incorporate contemporary conspiracy thinking. It also highlights the use of a documentary-style framework to revisit the tragedy.

Those changes suggest an adaptation interested in the environment that produces Carrie’s suffering, as well as the suffering itself. The mother-daughter relationship remains central to that story: home offers Carrie another source of fear when she desperately needs protection.

The bullying follows Carrie onto her phone

One of the clearest updates involves social media harassment.

According to The Verge, an anonymous Instagram account becomes a tool for tormenting Carrie. The review argues that this digital dimension gives the familiar story renewed relevance.

The implication is unsettling. Cruelty that once depended on a school corridor or a crowded classroom can now travel further, gather an audience and remain visible long after the original incident.

For a story built around public humiliation, that is a meaningful change in setting rather than a merely cosmetic update.

More time means more possibilities—and more scrutiny

The longer format also gives supporting characters greater attention. The New York Post’s review welcomes the additional development of figures including Margaret White and Chris Hargensen, while noting that some new material could divide viewers.

The Hollywood Reporter’s review headline, meanwhile, acknowledges Flanagan’s ability to expand the classic while questioning whether expansion was necessary.

That distinction matters. Explaining more about a character can enrich a tragedy; it can also interrupt its momentum. An adaptation of Carrie must balance the desire to understand its world with the pressure of a story moving towards catastrophe.

There are reservations about the supernatural additions, too. The Verge questions a subplot connecting Carrie’s abilities to King’s wider fictional universe, arguing that it weakens her agency.

A familiar tragedy with a contemporary question

Flanagan arrives with substantial experience adapting King, including Gerald’s Game and Doctor Sleep. His latest project gives him a different challenge: finding fresh emotional territory in a story many viewers already know.

Early reviews offer reasons for interest, particularly the modern treatment of bullying and the expanded character work. They also leave a question hanging over the series: will eight episodes bring viewers closer to Carrie, or put more distance between them and the devastating simplicity of her story?

A film about powerful technology executives became caught up in the business relationships surrounding them.

Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial, starring Andrew Garfield as Sam Altman, was developed at Amazon MGM Studios. But when the studio decided against releasing it, the filmmakers faced an uncertain future. Neon eventually acquired worldwide theatrical distribution rights, giving the project a route to audiences.

The move attracted scrutiny because of Amazon’s financial relationship with OpenAI. TheWrap reported that Amazon’s withdrawal followed a $50 billion investment in the AI company through a cloud computing partnership.

That timing prompted questions about conflicting commercial interests. It does not, however, establish the reason for the studio’s decision. Amazon’s public explanation was that the film would benefit from another distributor, while expressing support for Guadagnino and helping the production find a new home.

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The people behind the technology

Artificial explores the relationship between Altman and OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever, played by Yura Borisov. Its dramatic territory is the collision between idealism, ambition and the consequences of building increasingly powerful technology.

According to Vulture’s account, screenwriter Simon Rich developed the project with urgency, and filming took place largely in northern Italy. The production’s emphasis on personal relationships gives its technological subject a recognisably human centre: people making decisions whose consequences extend far beyond themselves.

Garfield’s transformation went beyond appearances

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Guadagnino described abandoning elaborate facial prosthetics after early tests. Garfield instead worked with Altman’s movements, posture and walk, supported by restrained makeup.

The director also chose to shoot on 35mm film, placing live performances at the centre of a story about artificial intelligence. Producer Jennifer Fox told the publication that the film’s assertions underwent extensive vetting. That remains the production’s account of its research process, rather than an independent endorsement of every dramatised scene.

A new home, and an unresolved question

Garfield welcomed the fact that Amazon allowed the film to move elsewhere. Fox, meanwhile, described the withdrawal as surprising after a collaborative production relationship.

Neon’s involvement resolved the immediate distribution problem. The wider question remains open: how freely can filmmakers examine influential companies when those companies also help finance and distribute entertainment? Artificial’s journey has made that question part of the conversation before audiences even enter the cinema.