Hindi
Zee to invest Rs 600 mn for Marathi, Bengali films
MUMBAI: Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd (Zeel) plans to invest Rs 600 million in producing and marketing a slate of Marathi and Bengali movies over two years.
The company aims to roll out 15 Marathi films during this period. The first to roll out has been Sade Made Teen which has grossed Rs 45 million at the box office.
“We will be putting in Rs 300 million for producing, promoting and distributing these Marathi films. The next film, De Dhakka, is set for May release,” a source in the company says.
Mahesh Manjrekar‘s Ashwani Films is doing De Dhakka. Zeel has also tied up with Smita Talwalkar‘s Ashmita Films and Bulbule‘s Indian Magic Eye.
Zeel will also be investing Rs 300 million for a production pipeline of around 15 films in Bengali. Two are already on the floors and will be released this year, the source says.
Earlier Zeel director regional channels Nitin Vaidya had told Indiantelevision.com that the company would be spending close to Rs 10 million for each Marathi film while in Bengali the costs would be marginally higher.
“The production costs, meanwhile, have gone up. Besides, we will be investing substantially on promotion and distribution of these movies,” the source says.
After theatrical release, the Marathi movies will be aired on Zee Talkies. Zee launched the Marathi movie channel on 25 August 2007.
Zee is also planning to launch a Bengali movie channel.
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.
