Hindi
Toby Emmerich is New Line Cinema president and COO
MUMBAI: US media conglomerate Time Warner has announced that Toby Emmerich has been named New Line Cinema president and COO. He will lead its reorganisation to become a stand-alone production entity as part of Warner Bros. Entertainment.
New Line will continue to maintain its own development, creative and production teams. In addition, New Line‘s marketing, publicity, distribution, business and legal affairs and physical production will report to Emmerich, but will closely coordinate with their Warner Bros. counterparts.
Emmerich will report directly to Warner Bros. president and COO Alan Horn. He will also work closely with Warner Bros. Pictures Group (WBPG) president Jeff Robinov as New Line will utilise WBPG‘s existing infrastructure to reduce costs and take advantage of Warner Bros.‘ industry-leading scale.
Warner Bros. chairman and CEO Barry Meyer says, “There isn‘t a better person than Toby to help us keep New Line vibrant, relevant and a key asset for Warner Bros. We are thrilled that he and New Line are now part of our family.”
Horn says, “Toby has played a major part in New Line‘s success over the last decade and helped define the company‘s taste and style in movies. Quite simply, he‘s a great film executive. He‘s highly respected, and he has solid relationships across the industry. Toby and New Line are both great additions to our Studio.”
Emmerich says, “I‘m very excited to lead the next chapter in New Line‘s history and am looking forward to the new challenges that lie ahead. This change is bittersweet, as so much of the company I‘ve worked at for the past 16 years is being reconceived, but I‘m committed to maintaining New Line‘s corporate DNA as a creative, aggressive entity.
“I plan to continue New Line‘s long and productive history as a company that can create hits in new niches–whether it‘s expanding the horror genre with films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Freddy vs. Jason, or turning an R-rated comedy like Wedding Crashers into a blockbuster. I want to thank Bob (Shaye) and Michael (Lynne) for the opportunities and support they generously provided through the years, and I‘d also like to thank Barry, Alan and Jeff for their collaboration and already making me feel welcome.”
New Line‘s upcoming films include Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay (being released on 25 April), Sex and the City (30 May ), Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D (11 July ) and Four Christmases (26 November).
New Line is widely credited with creating the genre of the R-rated comedy, based on the success of Wedding Crashers in 2005. The company is also one of the few studios that still works in the horror genre and is widely known for the iconic Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. It was recently announced that Michael Bay will produce a re-imagining of this classic. Under Emmerich‘s leadership, New Line released Freddy vs. Jason, has begun production on Final Destination 4 in digital 3D and has reunited The Texas Chainsaw Massacre team to recreate the original Friday the 13th.
Emmerich most recently served as president of production for New Line Cinema. He was named to that post in January 2001 and oversaw production during the most successful period in the company‘s history, which included the release of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Wedding Crashers, Monster-in-Law, Elf, and About Schmidt.
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.
