Hindi
MGM, RMLLC acquire rights to Ludlum’s ‘Matarese Circle’
MUMBAI: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Inc (MGM) Pictures, together with Relativity Media, LLC (RMLLC), has secured the rights to Robert Ludlum‘s novel The Matarese Circle.
RMLLC is a financing, consulting and production company that utilises both traditional and non-traditional channels in order to raise production and distribution funds, both for major studios and independent production entities.
Additionally, MGM and RMLCC have also closed a deal with two-time Academy Award winner Denzel Washington to star in the film, which is an adaptation of the suspense thriller and bears the same name.
Writers of 3:10 to Yuma, Michael Brandt and Derek Haas, have been roped in to write the film‘s script.
Jeffrey Weiner, Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Nick Wechsler, producers of The Bourne Ultimatum, Transformers and North Country, respectively, will serve as producers for the film.
Tucker Tooley will oversee the creative for Relativity.
Ludlum‘s The Matarese Circle is set during the Cold War period. The book pairs two rival spies, one from the CIA and the other from the KGB. The rival spies bury their hatchet for the moment because it is only they who are smart enough to have the killing abilities to go up against an international circle of killers called the Matarese.
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.
