The Indian film producer Fakir Chand Mehra became one of the giants of Bollywood after 1953 when he established Eagle Films, today one of the largest film production houses in India.

The company has released at least one big film a year and has had some of the biggest box-office hits in India. It also owns two of the most famous cinemas in the country, the Plaza in Delhi and the Minerva in Bombay — the latter of which is one of the oldest cinemas in India and, with more than 1,300 seats, among the biggest.

Mehra produced some of the most memorable films in India, including The Professor, Ujala (The Awakening) and Amrapali and, in 1976, he negotiated a joint Indo-Soviet co-production of Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves, which cast some of the biggest stars of Indian and Soviet cinema. It was directed by his son, Umesh, and was a hit in both countries.

Fakir Chand Mehra was born in Peshawar (now in Pakistan) in 1923. After school he worked for a while in the Indian Air Force. In 1945 he married Shyam Kapoor, the daughter of a wealthy businessman who went on to make her name as a poet. With Partition, Mehra’s family moved to Delhi, where he became a film distributor.

His heyday as a producer was at a time when cinemas were packed with young, mostly poor filmgoers seeking excitement and escapism. He produced 17 films before giving up production to focus on other businesses.

Mehra produced his last film in 1988, but the company — now a family concern run by his sons — continued to expand into almost all areas of the entertainment industry. Eagle Video Films, the television division, runs one of the most advanced TV studios in India and produces some of India’s biggest TV series.

If Mehra was responsible for riding the wave of Indian cinema’s golden years, it was his sons who anticipated the big changes that the arrival of nationwide television would bring in the 1990s. By adapting, the company grew while others succumbed to falling cinema audiences as television found its way into the remotest of rural villages.

Another of Mehra’s sons, Rajeev, continued the family tradition of daring innovation when he launched a television series featuring a Pakistani waiter and an Indian cook working — and squabbling — at an Indian restaurant in London. The barbed political dialogue made it hugely popular, and occasionally controversial.

Mehra, too, produced successful television programmes, including Office Office, but his main legacy was in cinema with still remembered hits such as Singapore, released in 1959.

The Minerva cinema became the focus of a family squabble in 2006 amid plans to redevelop it. One son broke ranks by urging the family to treat his father with dignity and leave the property intact for his lifetime.

Five years ago a gunman burst into Mehra’s house in the exclusive Malabar Hills and fired a pistol indiscriminately, killing a maid. The attack was never explained.

Mehra is survived by four sons and a daughter.

Fakir Chand Mehra, film producer, was born on August 29, 1923. He died on July 29, 2008, aged 84