Hindi
Gunday continues its strong run at the box-office
MUMBAI: Last week saw two films of different genres release. Darr @ The Mall a direct lift of a Hollywood flick from 1989 and Highway, a road movie. While, Darr @ The Mall is a total reject, Highway, also not creating a fad, is a little better. In which case, last week’s solo release, Gunday has reaped the benefit.
Darr @ The Mall has fared poorly with its day to day collections barely touching a crore mark. The film collected Rs 3.2 crore for its opening weekend.
Highway, banking on Sajid Nadiadwala’s banner and director Imtiaz Ali’s past record, fared a shade better. The film collected Rs 12.7 crore over its opening weekend with the Sunday collections showing a decent growth. The film’s 75 per cent business came from Delhi-NCR-Punjab and Mumbai. But, that is not enough to slot the film as an earner with as much as Rs 30 crore incurred for the release of the film.
Gunday proves once again that films on male bonding, friendships don’t usually fail. With an excellent weekend of Rs 43.93 crore, the film ended its first week run with a healthy Rs 63.1 crore adding another Rs 8.15 crore for the second weekend taking its ten day total to Rs 71.24 crore. Both, Ranveer Singh and Arjun Kapoor have consolidated their positions in the industry.
Hasee Toh Phasee has had a decent second week, its average merits notwithstanding. The credit goes to Parineeti Chopra whose performance is being appreciated by all. The film has added Rs 7.7 crore in its second week, taking its two week total to Rs 33.05 crore.
Jai Ho has not managed to do much business at the end of it fourth week with collections of Rs 45 lakh and a four week total of Rs 105.35 crore. It has not lived up to its expectations as other Salman Khan blockbusters in recent history.
Note: An Rs 100 crore grosser is not necessarily a hit because the take home amount is less than 50 per cent of that amount with over half going towards the theatre’s share and a part of it to the distribution expenses.
Hindi
Remembering Gyan Sahay, the lens behind film, television and advertising
From a puppet rabbit selling poppadums to Hindi cinema, he framed it all.
MUMBAI: There are careers, and then there are canvases. Gyan Sahay, the veteran cinematographer, director, and producer who passed away on 10 March 2026 in Mumbai, had one of the latter. Over several decades in the Indian film and television industry, he turned lenses, lights, and the occasional puppet rabbit into something approaching art.
A graduate of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune, Sahay built his reputation as a director of photography across a career that stretched from the early 1970s all the way to the digital age. He was the kind of craftsman who understood that a well-composed shot is not merely a technical achievement but a quiet act of storytelling.
For most Indians of a certain age, however, Sahay will forever be the man behind the rabbit. His direction of the iconic long-running television commercial for Lijjat Papad, featuring its now-legendary puppet bunny, gave the country one of its most cheerfully persistent advertising images. It was the sort of work that sneaks into the national subconscious and takes up permanent residence.
His big-screen credits as cinematographer include Anokhi Pehchan (1972), Pagli (1974), Pas de Deux (1981), and Hum Farishte Nahin (1988). In 1999, he stepped behind a different kind of camera altogether, making his directorial debut with Sar Ankhon Par, a drama that featured Vikas Bhalla and Shruti Ulfat, with a cameo by Shah Rukh Khan for good measure.
On television, Sahay was particularly prized for his command of multi-camera production setups, a skill that made him a go-to technician for large-scale shows and reality programmes. In an industry that has never been especially patient with complexity, he was the calm hand on the rig.
In later life, Sahay turned teacher. He participated regularly in masterclasses and Digi-Talks, often hosted by organisations such as Bharatiya Chitra Sadhna, sharing hard-won wisdom on cinematography, the comedy of timing in a shot, and the sweeping changes brought by the shift from celluloid to digital. He was also said to have been involved in a project concerning a biographical film on Infosys co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy.
Tributes from the film industry poured in following the news of his passing, with colleagues remembering him as a senior cameraman who served as a rare bridge between two entirely different eras of Indian cinema. That is, perhaps, the finest thing one can say of any craftsman: he kept up, and he brought others along with him.
