Hindi
Zee Studios to co-produce Akshay Kumar’s ‘Rustom’ with Neeraj Pandey
MUMBAI: Zee Studios will be co-producing the Akshay Kumar starred Rustom along Neeraj Pandey & Shital Bhatia’s Friday Filmworks and KriArj Entertainment, which is slated to release worldwide on 12 August, 2016.
Inspired by real life incidents, the film is written by Vipul Rawal and also marks the directorial debut of Tinu Suresh Desai.
Pandey will also pen the dialogues of the film, co-write the screenplay with Rawal as well as contribute towards the film’s edit.
Apart from Kumar, the film will also star two actresses. However, their names have not yet been finalised.
After Special 26 and Baby, the romantic thriller Rustom will be the third project in which Akshay Kumar and Pandey’s Friday Filmworks have teamed up.
Kumar said, “Having worked with Neeraj on two fabulous projects, I am excited to start work on our new film. I am happy that Zees Studios is putting its might behind this film along with KriArj Entertainment and Friday Filmworks. It gives me and the entire team confidence of this launched worldwide using the global might of Zee.”
Pandey added, “When Tinu narrated Rustom to us, we immediately got hooked to the quality of the narrative and its potential and instantly decided that it was something that we would like to produce. We also really felt that given the nature of the story, Akshay would be the perfect fit and him agreeing to come on board will definitely give it the canvas it requires.”
Friday Filmworks producer Shital Bhatia said, “One of the other key elements that was central to our plan while green lighting this film was that to do justice to the story it would need to be an international film traversing multiple countries and for that we would definitely require good partners. To that extent when both Zee Studios and KriArj Entertainment saw the same potential in the story as us and readily agreed to co-produce this film along with Friday Filmworks, it just further vindicated our belief in this project.”
Zee Studios CEO Nittin Keni said, “We are delighted to partner with Akshay Kumar, country’s leading icon, Neeraj Pandey and KriArj Entertainment on Rustom. For us at Zee, this is another key milestone for Zee’s aggressive foray into Bollywood.”
KriArj Entertainment producer Arjun N Kapoor added, “It is a momentous occasion to unveil our association with one of the most prolific entertainers of Hindi film industry, Akshay Kumar and the much recognised film-maker, Neeraj Pandey. With such a great beginning, we are sure this splendid team is headed to create some magic on the big screen.”
The first shooting schedule of Rustom commences by mid-December. The film will travel to multiple locations globally in the course of its production.
The music of Rustom will be released by Zee Music.
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.
