Hindi
UTV to distribute The Happening in India
MUMBAI: UTV, co-producers with 20th Century Fox of M Night Shyamalan‘s The Happening, is set to distribute the film in India. 20th Century Fox and Spyglass Entertainment will handle the worldwide distribution of the sci-fi thriller which releases on 13 June. UTV and Fox have equally co-invested in the $57 million movie venture. Addressing the press here today, M Night Shyamalan said: “My partnership with UTV in the making of The Happening has given me, for the first time, a real opportunity to foster my relationship with Indian audiences.” UTV CEO Ronnie Screwvala added, “This Night Shyamalan film is the biggest co-production as yet from an Asian production house. We are excited to work with one of the best directors in the world. Personally, I have admired and followed his work since Sixth Sense. Night is an extremely talented writer-director and this sci-fi is going to get the best worldwide release.” The Happening focuses on the man‘s presence on earth and explores the environment as the victim of his villainy. The film has been shot in east coast of America and Philadelphia and stars Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel, John Leguizamo and Spencer Breslin. Shyamalan, director of films like The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs and The Village, has also been conferred with the prestigious Padma Shri Award.
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.
