Hindi
Kamal Haasan’s Vishwaroopam crosses Rs 1 bn mark
MUMBAI: Controversies pay in the film world. For Kamal Haasan, it must have been worth swallowing all the problems his movie Vishwaroopam generated over its proposed release on the direct-to-home (DTH) platform ahead of the theatrical debut. Even as Haasan had to concede to the powerful film exhibition community and defer the DTH release, his much talked about magnum opus action thriller has crossed the Rs one billion mark at the box office.
Actor Rahul Bose tweeted the milestone achievement on the micro blogging website, “Just received figures of the all India box office collections of Vishwaroopam. 120 crores and counting. Superb! Vishwaroopam‘s the first film I‘ve been a part of that‘s made over 100 crores. Congratulations to the team and mr haasan especially!”
Bose plays the antagonist in the film. Other stars include Pooja Kumar, Andrea Jeremiah and Shekhar Kapur.
The movie has been marred with controversies even before its release. The first tangle it got itself into was when actor-director Hasaan decided to release the movie on DTH platform before its theatrical release. Just when the issue of Vishwaroopam‘s release was resolved, Muslim bodies in Tamil Nadu opposed the movie since it showed the community in bad light which resulted in the movie being banned from release in Tamil Nadu.
The film released worldwide on 25 January but in Tamil Nadu it hit the theatres as late as 7 February. Despite the delays and controversies, the film seems to have caught the fancy of the audiences.
The film was also released in Hindi by the name Vishwaroop. This version, though, has failed to attract audiences since it has managed to rake in just Rs 117.5 million in its first week.
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.
