It’s Wednesday, and the Dow has hit 22,000—but I still resent a $20 martini.

Hello from Los Angeles, where we’re welcoming a Bollywood hunk, taking a peek at Angelina Jolie’s new movie, and unveiling the packed slate for Vanity Fair’s New Establishment Summit.

ALI’S ARRIVAL

When Stephen Frears’s Victoria & Abdul premieres at the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals in a few weeks, Western audiences will get to know Ali Fazal, the dashing, 30-year-old Bollywood star who plays opposite Judi Dench as the Indian attendant who forged an unlikely friendship with Britain’s Queen Victoria. Ahead of the film’s festival premieres, Fazal is in Hollywood this week, meeting agents and journalists in a condensed charm offensive. A ring of suits surrounded Fazal in a gathering at West Hollywood’s Boa Steakhouse Tuesday night, as agents peppered the actor with questions about his lengthy audition process for Frears. Fazal, who flew into LAX from Bombay last week, had a small role in 2015’s Furious 7, the first American movie to gross 1 billion rupees at the Indian box office since Avatar—but he does not yet have representation stateside. There’s good reason for the town to be intrigued: Hollywood studios would love to snare a bigger piece of the massive Indian marketplace, which is dominated by its own bustling film industry. And ABC is hoping for a cross-cultural hit when Priyanka Chopra brings the world of Indian cinema to a sitcom she’s developing about a Bollywood star who settles down in an American suburb. Fazal, who seemed quite at ease being the center of attention Tuesday night, said he prepared for the Victoria & Abdul role by reading letters sent between his character and the Queen that revealed a surprising intimacy, including ones she penned in perfect Urdu and he in perfect English. It seems clear the Queen fell for Abdul. We’ll see if American moviegoers fall for Fazal when Focus Features opens Victoria & Abdul here September 22.

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By Peter Mountain/Courtesy of Focus Features.

MAY THE FORCE BE WITH HIM

VF.com’s Yohana Desta e-mails:

Another day, another Star Wars script going through extensive re-writes to maintain the artistic integrity of the most famous franchise in film history. This time around, re-writes are in order for Star Wars: Episode IX, the Colin Trevorrow-directed installment in the core series. The script, written by Trevorrow and his writing partner, Derek Connolly, will now be passed over to playwright and screenwriter Jack Thorne—who is quickly becoming something of a secret weapon in the fantasy world. Thorne recently wrote the wildly successful play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which received rapturous reviews after its West End debut last year. The story imagines Potter’s life as an adult, while also following the new adventures of his son Albus as he goes off to Hogwarts. It’s Thorne’s biggest project to date—although working on a Potter-related story would be anyone’s biggest project to date, wouldn’t it? Thorne has a handful of other high-profile projects coming up, including the family drama Wonder, starring Julia Roberts, Owen Wilson, and Jacob Tremblay, and the upcoming Channel 4/Amazon series Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams. Prior to being ushered into the Star Wars galaxy, Thorne collaborated with friendly Stormtrooper John Boyega, writing an adaptation of the play Woyzeck that the actor starred in this summer. So rest easy, Star Wars fans: this Episode IX seems to be in very good hands.

A PRETTY, PRETTY, PRETTY GOOD LINEUP

VF.com’s Hillary Busis e-mails: