Hindi
MGM acquires The Facttracker to produce live action feature film
MUMBAI: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) Pictures has acquired the rights to the children‘s book The Facttracker, which will be now produced into a live action feature film.
The Facttracker has been written by Carter Eaton,who will adapt the book into a screenplay along with his writing partner Ian Lendler.
MGM has roped in David Silverman (The Simpsons Movie, Monsters Inc.) to direct the film.
Shawn Levy, who directed Night at the Museum, will partner with Legally Blonde franchise producer Marc Platt to produce The Facttracker.
Levy will produce through his 21 Laps Entertainment Company, while Platt will produce through Marc Platt Productions.
“This is an incredibly rich family-film franchise where facts versus fiction. The film is battled out by a slew of dynamic, boldly drawn characters. It‘s exactly the kind of visual, heartfelt comedy that 21 Laps is looking to do. To pair such vivid material with superb creative partners like producer Marc Platt and filmmaker David Silverman is a thrill,” said producer Shawn Levy.
MGM vice president production Becky Sloviter will oversee the development of the film with Cale Boyter, MGM executive vice president production.
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.
