Hindi
Warner Bros. Pictures hits $2 billion box office mark
MUMBAI: Led by the success of 300 and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix earlier this year, and the more recently launched Fred Claus and Beowulf, Warner Bros.Pictures International (WBPI) has surpassed the $2 billion threshold in overseas box office.
The division hits this mark as it wraps up a fourth quarter that features the upcoming sci-fi thriller I Am Legend starring Will Smith.
The division has achieved its second highest gross ever, behind the $2.2 billion made in 2004, which remains the industry‘s all-time highest gross. The 2007 take is 78 per cent ahead of the same period in 2006, which includes $62 million generated by Village Roadshow Pictures territories.
WBPI enjoyed a strong start to the year with the continued overseas success of the Oscar winner The Departed, which grossed $159 million worldwide, and more than $36 million in 2007, marking director Martin Scorsese‘s highest grossing film internationally; Oscar-winning Happy Feet also released in 2006 with a $187 million worldwide gross, brought in $74 million in 2007, as well as Blood Diamond which took in a total of $114 million.
The worldwide box office performance of three films stood out in 2007 — 300, which took in $246 million internationally; Ocean‘s Thirteen with $194 million and exceeding the domestic gross by more than 65 per cent, and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix bringing in a record-breaking $645 million and doubling the domestic returns.
Also contributing to the $2 billion tally were titles including Music and Lyrics, David Fincher‘s Zodiac and No Reservations.
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.
