Hindi
UTV grosses Rs 385 million worldwide in opening weekend
MUMBAI: UTV Motion Pictures has claimed that its recent release Jodhaa Akbar has grossed Rs 385 million worldwide in the opening weekend.
The company says that the first week box office collection in India is Rs 250 million, which puts the film amongst the top five weekend openings of all the time for a Hindi film.
However, like some of the films like Om Shanti Om, Sawariyan, Lage Raho Munnabhai, Fanaa, the Rs 400 million Jodha Akbar too have seen late releases due to disputes over revenue sharing terms with multiplexes. As a result the Hrithik Roshan-Aishwarya Rai starrer Jodhaa Akbar had its full release on Saturday.
The dispute ended with UTV reaching an an agreement to take a revenue share of 41 per cent for the second week‘s collections from the multiplex owners.
UTV had originally demanded a 42.5 per cent share from the second week collections while multiplex owners were willing to part with 40 per cent.
Besides the film has still not hit the screens in Rajasthan and some parts of Gujarat.
In the overseas market, the company claims that the opening is amongst the top five weekends of all time for an Indian film and in US, it is the second highest opening weekend of all time.
The film has seen a simultaneous release in 26 countries, in 1100 screens worldwide and dubbed in three different languages – Hindi, Telugu, Tamil; and subtitled in English, Arabic and Dutch.
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.
