Hindi
Zee Kannada ‘stays real’ on movie rights prices
BANGALORE: Zee Kannada has confirmed picking up the satellite rights of the Kannada movie Preethi Yeke Bhoomi Mele Ide (PYBMI) but denies having paid Rs 10.8 million for the acquisition.
Zee Kannada Business Head Anup Chandrasekharan said that the amount paid was nowhere in the region. “We have paid a much lesser sum, which cannot be revealed due to the nondisclosure clause in the agreement signed with the producers of the movie,” said Chandrasekharan.
Chandrasekharan also denied that Zee Kannada had acquired the rights of the film, Sathya in Love, for Rs 8.1 million.
“Zee Kannada does not believe in paying unrealistic prices for movies, even at the cost of losing them to rival channels. Zee Kannada will not purchase a movie for a price higher than its market worth,” an official Zee Kannada statement noted.
“The figure of Rs 10.8 million is just hype created by Prem, the director of the movie when he made a statement to the media recently. Zee has actually paid less than a third of that figure,” said an industry source while speaking to indiantelevision.com, on condition of anonymity. “Even blockbusters like Mangaru Male and Duniya have been sold for less than Rs 4 million each, and the figures of Rs 6 million to 6.5 million are being bandied by the industry,” informed the source.
PYBMI was procured by Zee Kannada in December and is one among the 27 Kannada movies it acquired last year.
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.
