Hindi
Good content, not big banners, brings in revenue
MUMBAI: *The Diwali week saw two releases, both from major production houses.
‘Ae Dil Hai Mushkil’ had Karan Johar directing a home production after Bombay Talkies in 2013. Ajay Devgn, on the other hand, directs his second film, Shivaay, after his directorial debut in 2008 with ‘U Me Aur Hum.’ Starved of footfalls and collections, the exhibition trade held high expectations from both.
Since the period till the Diwali day is considered dull at the box office, both the films rest their best hopes on Monday and Tuesday (in parts) being holidays.
*Ae Dil Hai Mushkil met with highly mixed reports. Though a youth-oriented film, it lacked consistency even as Ranbir Kapoor continued to essay the role of a perpetual loser. While the first half was a time pass, the film dipped post interval.
With an average opening response, with no good word of mouth, the film went on dropping through the weekend to end its opening weekend with figures of Rs 35.25 crore. However, the film emerged with its best figures on Monday, a holiday and added about Rs 16 crore for day four.
*Shivaay had an indifferent opening response as, somehow, the film could not generate enough curiosity and, hence, draw the audience expected for its opening shows or over its day one. The film failed to generate positive word of mouth and the collections only dipped over next two days making it a very poor opening weekend performance for high budget film.
With the first weekend of Rs 27.8 crore, however, the film derived some benefit from the Monday holiday adding another over 15 crore. Following reports of the film’s length/duration of 172 minutes affecting the collections, Ajay Devgn has carried out deletion of 10 minutes of running time from the film
*31st October (tax exempt in Punjab), My Father Iqbal, Ek Tera Saath had a disastrous outcome as they could not collect beyond a few lakh during their first week.
*Beiiman Love, a Sunny Leone film, collected Rs 5 lakh in its second week taking its two week total to Rs 1.95 crore.
*Saat Uchakkey collected Rs 35 lakh in its second week to take its two-week tally to Rs 1.95 crore.
*Motu Patlu: King Of Kings (3-D: animation) sustained reasonably well during the dull pre-Diwali period to add Rs 1.25 crore in its second week taking its two week total to Rs 4.15 crore.
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.
