Hindi
Sequels & the need to cash in on previous successes
The film industry is going through its worst period in a long time. Nothing seems to be working as film after films flop losing almost total investments. This, when private investors are staging a comeback to invest in film distribution business as the big houses have curtailed their activities.
While the producers of recent films have been suffering, the main sufferers are the single screens as well as the multiplex chains who, besides servicing their investments, also need to tend to their fixed costs like, staff, power, maintenance and other such costs.
This is a Catch 22 situation. While the independent producers, who are keeping the supply going, they have to do it in limited budgets. The multiplex chains won’t give them decent playtime or reduced admission rates and the paying audience won’t be lured otherwise.
The stalemate continues.
The recent trend seems to be of making wome- oriented films. That is fine. They do work at times as was the case with, Kahaani, Dirty Picture, Neerja, Chalk & Duster, Ki And Ka, Fitoor, Sarabjit, Begum Jaan, Maatr, Noor and so on. But, just a few worked.
If Kahaani worked, why did Kahaani 2 did not? It did not because it came across as a product of greed. A need to cash in on the success of its predecessors. The makers did not even care that their ‘Dare It All’ protagonist of Kahaani was turned in to a helpless, hapless woman in Kahaani 2.
Both new releases of the week, Noor and Maatr, were women centric films. Both faced disastrous outcome at the box office.
Noor was much hyped as the Pakistani journalist writer Saba Imtiaz’s account of her life as a journalist in Karachi, among the most violent cities in the world. It was published as a book, Karachi, You Are Killing Me! The account had no story, looked like a dramatised and fictionalised writing. Nothing in the book seemed fit to incorporate it in the life of a Mumbai journalist.
Maatr was a vehicle for one time sought-after star, Raveena Tandon, as a senior actor to return in her veteran avatar as a mother. She played a mother on revenge mission for her raped and killed young daughter. The film failed to get an opening of any kind.
*Raveena’s comeback, Maatr, sadly, could not find enough footfalls to run a show. Turned into a ‘No audience No show’ affair as the collections remained in lakhs. The film’s promotion was poor too. The three day collections remained short of one crore at about Rs 70 lakh.
*Sonakshi Sinha, essaying the role of a struggling journalist, lacked head or tail. Is a loser on all counts as the film barely manages to put together Rs 4.1 crore crore for the first weekend.
*Begum Jaan, an outdated story told poorly, fails badly to incite the audience. After a poor opening weekend of Rs 10.6 crore, the film ends it first week with a total of Rs 15.1 crore.
*Badrinath KI Dulhania has taken its six week total to Rs 114.7 crore.
*Laali KI Shaadi Mein Laaddoo Deewana, Blue Mountain, Mirza Juuliet and Mukti Bhawan are also ran.
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.
