Hindi
Pink: Neither strategy nor reviews helped
Pink, with Shoojit Sircar as the force behind the film, was much hyped. The film also enjoyed a great deal of media and critics support. However, all this hype did not help the film as the response on the opening day remained tepid with a business of about Rs 4.2 crore.
It is the word of mouth which matters more in the days of high-priced admission rates and the film caters mainly to the multiplex audience. As the film managed to generate a debate on the social media, its collections took a jump on Saturday with figures of Rs 7 crore plus while Sunday went very well as the film collected Rs 20.6 crore for its first weekend.
Raaz: Reboot opened a bit better benefitting on its brand as it followed three Raaz episodes. The film took a reasonable opening day collections of about Rs 5 crore but, once the word of mouth spread about its poor merits, it dropped on Saturday while the Sunday collections remained static for the film to collect Rs 14.8 crore for its opening weekend.
Baar Baar Dekho proved to be a let-down on all counts. A farfetched story idea, to script writing to execution and casting, it looked amateur in all departments. The film earned almost total rejection. With an opening weekend of Rs 18.4 crore, the drop in the four days that followed was telling as it closed its first week with a total of Rs 26.1 crore.
Freaky Ali, a lift from a Hollywood film, Happy Gilmore, tried to attempt a comedy around the sport of golf, an unfamiliar sport with the Hindi audience, backfired. Nawazuddin Siddiqui’s talent could not sell this dud.
The film had a poor opening weekend of Rs 6.4 crore, and had little hope of sustaining through rest of the week as it collected Rs 10.7 crore for its first week.
Akira continued with its poor run in second week. The film collected Rs 3.1 crore to take its two week tally to Rs 27.2 crore.
A Flying Jatt collected Rs 10 lakh in its third week to take its three week total to Rs 35.6 crore.
Rustom collected Rs 20 lakh in its fifth week to take its five week total to Rs 124.3 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.
