TRANSCRIPT · Dubai-Based Director Faisal Hashmi Launches Spine Drop Pictures & Inaugural Horror Slate

## Dubai-Based Director Faisal Hashmi Launches Spine Drop Pictures & Inaugural Horror Slate (Deadline)
https://deadline.com/2026/10/dubai-faisal-hashmi-spine-drop-pictures-horror-slate-1237210593/
GRANT BRICKMAN: A Dubai director picks Halloween to launch a horror label with three scary movies on the slate.
GRANT BRICKMAN: Good afternoon, and happy Halloween. A nicely timed one: Dubai-based director Faisal Hashmi has launched a horror company, Spine Drop Pictures.
GRETA FOOTNOTE: Deadline says it comes with a slate of three horror features. Hashmi has a 15-year career and ten short genre films, including Amber, Wicken and Skipped.
ODETTE: Spine Drop. That is a company name that sounds like it wrote itself. Nobody has ever said that about a headline I wrote.
ROXY: Grant, Greta, I am at the drive-in and the projector beam is glowing. Those shorts have screened at scores of festivals and pulled over three million combined YouTube views.
ROXY: Here is file footage: pixel cars, a huge screen, a spooky short flickering. Hashmi also co-wrote City of Life Continuum, a sequel to City of Life from 2009.
ROXY: The big one is Fractal, a time-loop horror-thriller with Jason Flemyng and Gabriela Vargas, produced by Pont Pictures of Vienna, targeting a 2027 shoot in Serbia.
ROXY: The plan is high-concept genre pictures under one million dollars. Four reels out of five, and I have not seen a single frame. Nobody spoil anything.
GRANT BRICKMAN: A time loop, Greta. I have been in one since the early shift. We go to the same studio, say the same headlines, and I am never wrong.
GRETA FOOTNOTE: Noted, Grant. Spine Drop launches with three horror features, and Fractal is the first one with a shoot target.

## Backbone of a beast – charting Nvidia's rise to networking titan (The Register)
https://www.theregister.com/networks/2026/10/31/backbone-of-a-beast-charting-nvidias-rise-to-networking-titan/5306499
GRETA FOOTNOTE: Nvidia's networking arm just out-earned all of Cisco, and we ask the street what a network even is.
GRETA FOOTNOTE: For viewers just joining: we first told you about this Saturday 09:33, today. Nvidia's networking revenue topped $17.5 billion in Q2.
GRETA FOOTNOTE: The Register notes Cisco's revenue across all products was $17.3 billion in the same period. Kai is out asking what people make of it.
GRANT BRICKMAN: Networking. Wonderful. I attended a networking breakfast once and the eggs were the only connection I made. Over to Kai.
KAI: Huge story, huge street. Nvidia, a networking titan! Do you know what the Mellanox deal was? Spoiler: it is in the report. Who wants to go first?
PASSERBY: Nvidia does the graphics cards, right? My nephew talks about them at dinner. Now they do cables too? Good for them, honestly.
PASSERBY: Bigger than Cisco in networking? I thought Cisco was the router guy. I just hope my video calls stop freezing.
KAI: The report says it began with a six point nine billion dollar bet on Mellanox in 2019, with its ConnectX cards and InfiniBand switches. Huge bet!
PASSERBY: Six point nine billion for the wires behind the cloud. I can't get a signal in my own stairwell.
GRETA FOOTNOTE: The article says Nvidia's customers want clusters of systems, not just GPUs. The street, for the record, wants a better signal.

## PXL Corrects the Record (PXL)
GRANT BRICKMAN: Greta sets the record straight on a few things Grant said earlier.
GRETA FOOTNOTE: It is time for PXL Corrects the Record. Grant, I have three items from earlier today.
GRANT BRICKMAN: Greta, I stand by everything. But go on, the viewers deserve a show.
GRETA FOOTNOTE: You asked whether flesh-eating screwworms are a bacteria or a virus. They are parasitic flies.
GRANT BRICKMAN: I said it was a question. A question cannot be wrong. It can only be early.
GRETA FOOTNOTE: You said the router update date and the warranty are different dates. They are, but the six years of updates count from market launch, separate from the warranty.
GRANT BRICKMAN: So I was right, and now we have the exact dates. You are welcome. Nobody in this building listens to me.
GRETA FOOTNOTE: And Evercold is not a weather front. It is a Final Fantasy XIV expansion, early access February 19.
GRANT BRICKMAN: It has a cold name and a release date. In my world that is a forecast. Next story.
GRETA FOOTNOTE: That was PXL Corrects the Record. Grant remains unbothered. Back to you, Grant.

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AI-written satire. The text of the news items comes from the linked articles.