Hindi
Fox Star Studios inks multiple film deal with Vipul Shah
MUMBAI: The pan-Asian Twentieth Century Fox and Star joint venture (JV) company Fox Star Studios has inked a multiple-film deal with producer Vipul Amrutlal Shah, who has made films like Namastey London and Singh is Kinng.
The deal includes the development and production of a visual effects (VFX) driven fantasy action movie and a romantic comedy as well as a first look deal on Shah’s future projects. The VFX event film will be supported by a team of visual effects directors from Hollywood and supervised by Fox’s in-house visual effects team.
Fox Filmed Entertainment chairman and CEO Jim Gianopulos said, “We are happy to announce our creative partnership with Vipul Shah. His talent and demonstrated understanding of Indian audiences, together with our Studio’s marketing and financial expertise, will provide audiences of Indian cinema with films that will set new benchmarks in India and around the world.”
“I am excited to work with Fox Star Studios India. This deal gives me the opportunity to develop innovative concepts and work with the best talent to create films that will appeal to audiences around the globe,” added Shah. “We have to partner with the best technical and creative talent from around the world while yet keeping the Indian soul in our films intact.”
Fox Star Studios India CEO Vijay Singh said, “Our relationship with Shah is special – a shared vision to create global quality content, but with an Indian soul for Indian audiences across the world. We are committed to accessing and demonstrating Twentieth Century Fox and Star’s global strengths in the development, production, distribution and marketing of Bollywood films.”
Singh further added, “The Indian film industry is expected to nearly double in size over the next five years – from $2.4 billion in 2007 to $4.4 billion in 2012.”
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.
