Hindi
Paramount to release Shyamalan’s Last Airbender in 2010
MUMBAI: Paramount Pictures, in partnership with Nickelodeon Movies, will be releasing M. Night Shyamalan‘s film The Last Airbender in 2010.
Paramount Film Group president John Lesher said, “We‘re delighted to be partnering with Nickelodeon to bring M. Night Shyamalan‘s vision of The Last Airbender to the big screen and to audiences of all ages.”
Based on the Nickelodeon animated TV series, the film is set in a world where human civilisation is divided into four nations: water, earth, air and fire.
Shyamalan said, “I was drawn to the series because of its influences-one being Hayao Miyazaki. I‘ve always been a huge fan of Miyazaki‘s work. In The Last Airbender I see an opportunity to make a live-action version of a Miyazaki film.”
Apart from directing, he will also produce the epic action-adventure based on the script that has been penned by him.
Paramount Pictures vice chairman Rob Moore stated, “Shyamalan‘s exciting vision for a film with the potential of The Last Airbender is another perfect fit for the fourth of July holiday weekend that we have used to launch such blockbusters as War of the Worlds and Transformers.”
Shyamalan‘s new film The Happening will be released later this year.
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.
