Hindi
3rd and 4th installment of Munnabhai coming up
MUMBAI: Not only Rajkumar Hirani will don the director‘s hat for the third installment of the series, producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra has also announced a fourth film of the franchise.
Both the films will be shot back-to-back in which Sanjay Dutt and Arshad Warsi will reprise their roles as Munna Bhai and Circuit.
Hirani and Chopra were discussing the story of the third film. As things developed, they realised that there was a story within the story and there was scope to develop it into a separate film. This is when the fourth chapter was thought about. After a series of meetings the two finally decided to add a fourth installment to the franchise.
Although, there were reports that Habib Faisal of Band Baaja Baraat fame or Rajesh Mapuskar, who recently directed Ferrari ki Savari for Chopra might be roped in to direct the third installment, the producer couldn‘t think of any other name besides Hirani to handle the two projects.
Hirani will start shooting the third part around Christmas in India while the fourth film might see Munnabhai and his sidekick travel abroad for the first time. The director of the fourth part is still to be finalized.
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.
