Hindi
Dark Knight Rises generates Rs 250 mn in opening weekend
MUMBAI: The Dark Knight Rises, the latest Batman movie from the Warner Bros. Entertainment, which stars Christian Bale as Batman, has collected Rs 250 million in its opening weekend in India.
The first weekend collections are more than what Dar Media had paid to secure the domestic distribution rights of the film. The distributor has paid almost Rs 180 million for the all-India theatrical distribution rights; the only other Hollywood film to have been sold to a single theatrical distributor was Spider-Man 3, which was released in 2007. Incidentally, the film‘s Indian distribution rights were sold by Sony Pictures Entertainment to Percept Picture for around Rs 150 million.
The first of the Batman series, Batman Begins, was released in 2005 across 70 screens (57 prints) and generated around Rs 13.6 million in the first three days from the Indian box-office, while the sequel, The Dark Knight, which released in 2008 across 250 screens (210 prints) earned around Rs 38 million in the opening weekend, according to Warner Bros.
The record for being the highest Hollywood grosser in India in the opening weekend is held by The Amazing Spider-Man released on 29 June. The film generated Rs 340 million for Sony Pictures Entertainment.
However, The Dark Knight Rises was released with around 650 prints across 700 screens, while The Amazing Spider-Man released across 1,500 screens.
“The Christoper Nolan film opened very well. It ran to almost houseful capacity on Friday and during the weekend too, the frenzy continued. But it would have been another picture, had the film been released in 3D, since the ticket prices are higher for 3D films,” said Cinemax DGM Girish Wankhede.
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.
