Hindi
‘Detective Byomkesh Bakshy!’: Lacks twists & turns; is slow
MUMBAI: As is apparent from the name, Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! falls in the detective genre, the kind that has not been tried in some time. Set in WW II Calcutta of 1942, it can be termed as a period detective saga. It is based on the famous detective character, Byomkesh Bakshy, created by writer Sharadindu Bandopadhyay, which has been made into many TV and movie versions.
Sushant Singh Rajput, who plays Byomkesh, is just finishing his college and is uncertain about his future plans. Anand Tiwari, a batch mate, learns that his father has gone missing and he asks Sushant to help find him.
Sushant has this knack for observing and making logical deductions. Sushant refuses to help saying his father may have committed some crime and vanished. This earns him a slap from Anand.
However, Sushant gets back to Anand and agrees to help him. He starts with checking in into the same guest house, Anukul Lodge. This where Anand’s father also stayed and from where he had gone missing. Sushant is an accidental detective and he beats around the bush, looking for clues everywhere. His suspicion hovers around a suddenly shut down chemical factory owned by a politician from where, finally, Anand’s father’s dead body is recovered.
The politician is booked but even while the DCP is interrogating him, it strikes Sushant that the politician is being framed. On his word, the DCP lets him go. The trial and error method of detecting continues while the truth is right around Sushant as he searches far and wide.
The plot thickens as the theme expands its scope from a murder of a chemistry scholar to heroin to the local politics to free the country to a plot to pave the way for the entry of Japanese troop through the river Ganga!
There is also a conflict between a Chinese drug dealer and a presumed dead rival who has hijacked tons of heroin of the Chinese.
After all this detective work done by Sushant, the film is taken to its conclusion in a traditional way by collecting people concerned under one roof. The culprit being one of them is a given. As happens in all detective stories, Sushant takes to retelling the plot, laying bare the intentions of culprit and who it is. How you wish you were told this an hour earlier.
The problem with Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! is that it is too slow and lacks the twists and turns and red herrings that such a story needs. It therefore has no grip. The script needed to be tight. Visually too it is drab with indoor scenes being dimly lit while outdoor ones are dulled even more with smoke added for effect.
While the background score is effective, songs are chosen keeping the period in mind and, hence, lack appeal to today’s listener.
What lands some relief to the viewer is Sushant’s pleasant outlook (which other regional actors don’t quite have). Of the women, Swastika Mukherjee brings some oomph though as a performer she has limits. Anand is good and so is Divya Menon despite getting a limited exposure. Meiyang Chang is a good addition to character artistes. The one who impresses is Neeraj Kabi (who also threatens a sequel at the end).
Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! is slow and offers nothing to recommend it.
Producers: Aditya Chopra, Dibakar Banerjee
Director: Dibakar Banerjee
Cast: Sushant Singh Rajput, Anand Tiwari, Neeraj Kabi, Divya Menon, Swastika Mukherjee, Meiyang Chang, Mark Bennington, Takanori Kikuchi, Shivam, Dr Kaushik Ghosh, Anindya Banerjee, Arindol Bagchi, Peter Wong, Pradipto Kumar Chakraborty, Manoshi Nath, Moumita Chakraborty, Tirtha Mallick, Prasun Gain, Aryann Bhaumik, Prashant Kumar & Nishant Kumar, Shaktipada Dey, Sandip Bhattacharya, Piyali Ray.
Hindi
Jio Studios unveils AI-powered Krishna teaser at NAB Show 2026
Global first look of Krishna uses Galleri5 AI pipeline on Azure, Historyverse slate as Jio’s Dhurandhar crosses Rs 3,000cr worldwide.
MUMBAI: Krishna has just dropped a divine teaser and this time the gods are powered by silicon, not just scripture. Jio Studios and Collective Studios’ Historyverse stole the spotlight at the NAB Show 2026 in Las Vegas with the world’s first teaser for their upcoming theatrical feature Krishna, directed by Manu Anand. The big reveal happened during Microsoft’s keynote “Powering Intelligent Media, From AI Experimentation to Real-World Impact,” where the film’s AI-native production pipeline took centre stage alongside Collective Artists Network’s in-house platform, Galleri5.
At the heart of this mythological spectacle lies a fresh cinematic workflow built by Galleri5 on Microsoft Azure’s advanced AI and cloud infrastructure. Forget bolting AI onto traditional VFX or animation, this is an end-to-end, production-grade system woven into every layer: world-building, character creation, shot design and final output. Yet the storytelling remains firmly director-led, emphasising emotional depth, stillness, music and performance rather than pure spectacle. The result? Large-format theatrical cinema rooted in Indian history and culture, but conceived in ways that were simply not possible before.
Collective Artists Network runs Galleri5 natively on Azure, leveraging Microsoft Foundry and cutting-edge AI tools to handle film, episodic and advertising workflows in a secure enterprise environment. Microsoft highlighted Collective as a “Frontier” organisation successfully moving AI from pilot projects to real production-scale deployment in cinema. The technology is also on display at Microsoft’s NAB booth in the West Hall (Booth W1731).
Jio Studios (Media & Content Business, Reliance Industries), president Jyoti Deshpande said the project advances the studio’s mission to take Indian stories global with scale, ambition and authenticity, “With Krishna, we are embracing cutting-edge AI-led filmmaking while democratising these tools to make them more accessible, intuitive and cost-effective for storytellers everywhere.”
Collective Artists Network founder & group CEO Vijay Subramaniam added, “We’re using technology developed in India to carry our culture and history to audiences worldwide at a scale never seen before.”
Microsoft, vice president for telco media & entertainment, gaming Silvia Candiani noted that the media industry has reached an inflection point, “AI is no longer about experimentation but delivering real impact at production scale… By building AI-native creative systems on Microsoft Azure, Collective exemplifies how storytellers can unlock new formats, move faster and realise a true return on intelligence while keeping human creativity at the centre.”
Krishna forms part of Historyverse, Collective Studios’ ambitious slate of history and culture-driven IPs. The slate draws from iconic figures and traditions that shaped the Indian subcontinent, including stories inspired by Kali, Karna and Durga. It builds on the already-released Mahabharat: Ek Dharmayudh series, showing how ancient narratives can be reimagined for modern screens.
Jio Studios, India’s leading content studio and the media and content arm of Reliance Industries, continues its blockbuster run. The studio’s Dhurandhar franchise led by Dhurandhar and Dhurandhar: The Revenge has become the first Indian film series to cross Rs 3,000 crore worldwide. It also delivered three consecutive years of India’s highest-grossing Hindi films: Stree 2 (2024), Dhurandhar (2025) and Dhurandhar: The Revenge (2026). In just eight years, Jio Studios has assembled a library of over 160 films and series, with more than 60 titles winning over 500 awards. Other notable successes include Laapataa Ladies (India’s official Oscar entry 2025), Stree, Article 370, Shaitaan and Mrs.
The NAB unveiling marks another step in Jio Studios and Collective’s push to blend Indian storytelling talent with frontier technology proving that the future of cinema may well be both ancient in spirit and thoroughly modern in execution. For audiences who love epic tales with a fresh twist, Krishna promises to deliver divine drama, this time with a little help from the cloud.
