Hindi
Amitabh Bachchan and Farhan Akhtar’s ‘Do’ Renamed ‘Wazir’
MUMBAI: After creating buzz with the first look of the film which showcases the actors (Farhan Akhtar and Amitabh Bachchan) engaged in a game of chess with Big B seated on a wheelchair against the backdrop of the famous Haus Khas village in Delhi, the makers of the movie has another surprising announcement.
Earlier named Do, the upcoming film of Bachchan and Akhtar has been officially titled Wazir.
Directed by Bejoy Nambiar, the film is being written and produced by Vidhu Vinod Chopra. The movie also stars Aditi Rao Hyadri as AKhtar’s love interest.
Farhan took to Twitter to announce the change in the film’s title. “The Vidhu Vinod Chopra/ Bejoy Nambiar film is now officially titled Wazir,” he tweeted.
Bachchan, 72, is reportedly playing an ailing bed ridden chess master in the movie while Akhtar, 40, will play an ATS officer in the film. The film is slated to go on floor on 29 September 2015.
Bachchan has earlier worked with Chopra in 2007 film Eklavya: The Royal Guard but this is the first collaboration between the actor and Nambiar, best known for helming Shaitan.
The megastar is currently working on Shoojit Sircar’s Piku starring Deepika Padukone and Irrfan Khan. On the other hand, Farhan Akhtar is wrapping up his sister Zoya Akhtar’s film Dil Dhadakne Do. The actor is also producing films like Bangistan, Raees and the upcoming film on time travelling starring Sidharth Malhotra under his banner Excel Entertainment.
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.
