Hindi
Tips’ Kismat Konnection garners Rs 270 million worldwide
MUMBAI: Kismat Konnection, a Tips Production which is being distributed worldwide by UTV Motion Pictures, has grossed approximately Rs 270 million in the opening three days of its release. The film was released across 900 screens worldwide, including the US, UK, Australia, Pakistan and the Middle East.
Kismat Konnection has garnered around Rs 207.6 million in India, with an average of Rs 3,75,000 per print.
UTV Motion Pictures CEO Siddharth Roy Kapur said, “We are thrilled with the opening weekend collections of Kismat Konnection around the world. This demonstrates the value of backing strong content with aggressive marketing and distribution. This is the second consecutive blockbuster in our association with Tips, with both movies that we have collaborated on, Race and Kismat Konnection.”
While in the Middle East the film has earned a total of $260,310, in the US the film collected $213,112 up to Saturday night. Australia saw a weekend collection of $42,952. In the UK the film had a cumulative weekend collection of $223,641 and in Pakistan the film had earned $22,418 on Friday.
Directed by Aziz Mirza, Kismat Konnection is a story about Raj Malhotra (Shahid Kapoor), who struggles to find that “one chance” to showcase his mettle.
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.
