Hindi
Gautham Menon planning Hindi remake of Tamil film
MUMBAI: Bollywood‘s growing love affair with the South has not just helped Salman Khan reclaim his stardom but has also become a ticket for many southern directors to make their mark here.
One such director is Gautham Menon, known in Bollywood as a filmmaker whose films gets remade in Hindi as hit films. He is mulling with the idea to cast either Salman Khan or Shah Rukh Khan in the remake of his Kamal Hassan-starrer Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu.
The role of the protagonist is that of a daredevil cop who is not just defined by his work, but also the style in which he does it. As things stand today, Salman Khan is most preferred as he has already played a cop in Wanted, a remake of the Tamil film Pokhri.
Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu, made in 2006, was a super hit film because it was one of the more modern crime thrillers with some super advanced special effects. The film had Hassan playing a cop. The film was reviewed as one of the most engaging investigative films down South.Meanwhile, Menon is making a comeback to Bollywood with the remake of his Tamil film Vinnaithaandi in Hindi titled Ekk Diwana Tha, starring Prateik and Amy Jackson.
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.
