Hindi
Eros sets up subsidiary to foray into VFX
MUMBAI: Eros International has set up a subsidiary company to foray into visual effects in association with leading international talent Charles Darby.
Charles Darby
EyeQube Studios, in which Darby will have a minority stake, is initially investing $5-7 million to start operations and is already working on two of Eros‘s films, Drona and Aladdin.
“We are setting up a visual effects company specifically for the Indian market as we realise there is an enormous gap. We will also have very select international projects. Eyeqube is already working on Drona and Aladdin which are made on a budget of $10 million each,” said Eros International COO Jyoti Deshpande.
Both these films will have visual effects that will eat away 40-50 per cent of the total investments.
EyeQube also will be working on 3-4 of Eros‘ movie projects. “Each of these movies will draw investments in the range between $40-60 million,” said Deshpande.
EyeQube will cater to the top-end visual effects work and have over 300 people working in it. “We plan to work on 3-4 films a year and our focus will be on quality,” said Darby who was in Mumbai to address the press conference.
Eros International president India Sunil Lulla said, “EyeQube will raise the bar of Indian visual effects and catapult our industry to international standards. It will produce not only Indian films with visual effects never seen before, but be also selectively involved with a few international projects.”
Charles Darby has been associated with more than 45 films in the last 13 years. Darby‘s work includes films like Titanic, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, The Fifth Element and Minority Report.
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.
