Hindi
Warner Bros India forays into regional film production, sews deal with Soundarya Rajnikanth
MUMBAI: Warner Bros Pictures India is set to foray into regional film production. The Hollywood major has stitched an exclusive multi-movie deal with Soundarya Rajnikanth‘s Ocher Studios to get a footprint across the four southern languages.
According to the terms of the deal, Warner Bros will be involved in funding the film projects. The pact covers the production and distribution of Live-Action South Indian language films to be released by Warner Bros.
Soundarya Rajnikant, the daughter of superstar Rajnikant, said that it is a great privilege for her company to associate with a world leader in the entertainment industry. “Ocher Studios has always strived towards achieving high standards in quality content creation, and with Warner‘s expertise in the marketing and distribution space this association will definitely create an impact in the film industry,” she added.
While Warner Bros specializes in the creation, production, distribution, licensing and marketing of all forms of entertainment and their related businesses, Ocher Studios offers its services ranging from VFX, digital film lab, non-linear editing, CGI, and pre-production.
“We are thrilled with this opportunity to expand our local production business across all four southern languages by getting into a strategic alliance with Soundarya Rajnikant of Ocher Studios. As is our practice, we will work closely with our partners to impart our experiences and expertise in a collaborative way,” said EVP Warner Bros International Richard J Fox.
Added Warner Bros. Pictures India country head Blaise Fernandes: “We are excited and proud to be working with Soundarya Rajnikant who is extremely talented, has good insight into film making and knows the pulse of the southern market. Given Soundarya and Ocher Studios‘ creative skills combined with our marketing and distribution network, this is a perfect synergy between the two companies to come together.”
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.
