Hindi
UTV to produce India’s first 3D dance musical
MUMBAI: UTV Motion Pictures will be producing India‘s first 3D dance musical. Titled ABCD (AnyBody Can Dance), the film will be directed by ace choreographer Remo Fernandes.
India‘s best choreographers and dancers of the last few decades – Prabhu Deva and Ganesh Acharya – play key characters in the film. It also stars hit reality dancing show Dance India Dance winners like Salman Khan, Dharmesh, Prince, Mayuresh and Vrushali, all of whom will essay central characters.
Lauren Gottlieb, the global winner of the popular television talent shop ‘So You Think You Can Dance’, will play the heroine in the film.
UTV Motion Pictures CEO Siddharth Roy Kapur said, “We are thrilled to kick off one of our most exciting projects to date, ABCD (AnyBody Can Dance), India‘s first ever 3D dance musical. It has always been our endeavour to bring audiences movies that are different from the tried and tested, and with ABCD we believe we‘re pushing the boundaries of innovative content.”
The film is scheduled to release by the end of 2012.
Will Remo be good enough as a director? “Remo has proven to everyone that he is not only a sensational choreographer but also a director who knows the pulse of today‘s audience. He‘s the best choice to direct a film based on dance, and with Prabhu Deva (who is also directing Rowdy Rathore for us), Ganesh Acharya and other leading lights from India‘s dance fraternity in the cast, ABCD promises to be a total paisa-vasool family entertainer,” said Kapur.
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.
