Hindi
Sony releases 2012 line-up
MUMBAI: After ending 2011 on an encouraging note with the success of The Adventures of Tintin, Sony Pictures has announced the line-up for next year with five major franchises being brought back along with awaited films from directors of the likes of David Fincher and Quentin Tarantino.
The year begins with the already critically acclaimed and award-nominated The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the first of a trilogy starring Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara on 6 January, and ends with Quentin Tarantino‘s Django Unchained starring Leonardo DiCaprio on 28 December.
Said Sony Pictures India managing director Kercy Daruwala, “After completing 75 years as a studio in India, and ending this past year on a high with the tremendous success of The Adventures of Tintin, I can say without a doubt that the best is yet to come. 2012 has a dream line-up with five major franchises coming back. Together these franchises have made over Rs. 261 crore at the box office in India.”
The line-up includes the Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones-starrer Men in Black 3 in 3D that will releases in May, The Amazing Spider-Man in 3D in July, Skyfall, the next film in the Bond franchise in November.
Also releasing would be the Kate Beckinsale-starrer Underworld: Awakening, the fourth installment of the Underworld series in 3D in January and Milla Jovovich‘s Resident Evil: Retribution in 3D in September.
Also in the line-up are a remake of 1991 blockbuster Total Recall (releasing worldwide in August), Adam Sandler‘s comedy I Hate You Dad, Premium Rush starring Joseph Gordon Levitt, The Vow starring Rachel McAdams, claymation comedy The Pirates! Band of Misfits, 3D animated film Hotel Transylvania and 21 Jump Streeti, a revival of the cult 80‘s TV serie,s now as a major motion picture.
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.
