Hindi
Box Office: ‘Wazir’ takes in Rs 19.85 crore in opening weekend
MUMBAI: The Amitabh Bachchan – Farhan Akhtar starrer Wazir has received mixed word of mouth. A contrived revenge story on the done to death topic – Kashmir terrorism theme – the film manages to survive thanks to its solo release status after a three week draught of new releases. The survival, however, remains at the lower side.
The film managed to collect Rs 5.5 crore on day one, adding a bit more on Saturday and Sunday. However, Monday saw the figures dropping. The film collected Rs 19.85 crore for the opening weekend.
Chauranga, an outdated, boring and unpalatable film finds no takers as expected.
Dilwale collected Rs 10.5 crore in its third week. The collections may be attributed to the open run with no opposition. This takes the film’s three week total to Rs 137.2 crore. This is not going to be enough for the film and its distributors to cover their investment.
Bajirao Mastani gets the better advantage of a free run for three weeks, mostly thanks to the social media, and puts together Rs 26.5 crore in its third week. This takes the film’s three week tally to Rs 158.6 crore. However, the film is nowhere near recovering its extra high production cost.
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.
