Sholay turns 50: From near collapse to cinematic immortality

Sholay turns 50 on August 15,

Three days after ‘Sholay’ hit theatres in August 1975, the word on the street was grim: the film was a flop. Exhibitors grumbled, trade pundits shook their heads, and even some distributors began to panic. But Salim-Javed, then at the peak of their powers, were unfazed.

In an audacious show of faith and a belief in their craft, they placed ads in major trade magazines proclaiming, “We, Salim-Javed, guarantee this film will earn more than one crore in every major Indian territory.”

They were wrong—not about the success, but about the scale. ‘Sholay’ would go on to mint more than three crores, rewriting the box office record books and, more importantly, the way Hindi cinema imagined itself. It’s tempting to think of ‘Sholay’ as a happy accident—a piece of lightning that just happened to strike.

The truth is more interesting. This was a film that could have collapsed a dozen times over: mechanical failures, last-minute casting shifts, and script rewrites under pressure. Released on August 15—while the country marked Independence Day—the film announced itself with a swagger that would echo across decades. Its making was a tangle of improbable timings, sharp instincts, and a little bit of madness. The obstacles didn’t just get solved—they got folded into the film’s DNA, becoming the scars and stories that fans would pass down like heirlooms.

Amitabh Bachchan in Sholay

Some of the most enduring legends are tucked in the margins. The climax we know—where Thakur hands over Gabbar Singh to the police—wasn’t the one Salim-Javed and director Ramesh Sippy had originally written.

In their version, Thakur bludgeons Gabbar to death with his spiked shoes, a visceral finale that mirrored the character’s pain. But this was the Emergency era, and the censors ordered a less brutal ending. That cut was more than a creative compromise; it was a reminder that even the most commercial of films could be reshaped by the politics of the day. The casting, too, was a dance of near misses. Dharmendra was offered both Thakur and Gabbar before he zeroed in on Veeru.

Both Sanjeev Kumar and Amitabh Bachchan were deeply drawn to the role of Gabbar Singh. Jai was meant for Shatrughan Sinha until scheduling clashes took him out of the running. Amitabh Bachchan, then not yet the “angry young man” of legend, slipped into the part thanks to Dharmendra’s recommendation.

And then there was Gabbar Singh—the iconic outlaw who would become shorthand for villainy in Indian cinema. Danny Denzongpa was the first choice, but an extended shoot in Afghanistan for Feroz Khan’s ‘Dharmatma,’ modelled on Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘The Godfather,’ pulled him away. At Javed Akhtar’s insistence—who had once watched Amjad Khan perform in a college play in Delhi—Ramesh Sippy went to catch Khan in a stage production in Bombay.

The subsequent meeting changed everything. Khan’s voice was trained with a dash of Awadhi, his posture shaped, and his menace measured down to the syllable. What emerged wasn’t just a villain, but a cultural landmark—a character who would inspire decades of parodies, memes, and rip-offs. What made Gabbar unforgettable wasn’t a single moment but a hundred tiny tweaks, stitched together until the performance became myth.

Amjad Khan played the role of dreaded Gabbar

One of the most famous moments in ‘Sholay’—Veeru’s drunken threat to leap from the water tank—almost didn’t exist. During the shoot, it was pointed out that Dharmendra, the biggest star of the film, didn’t have a highlight scene, and there was every chance his fans would leave disappointed. Salim-Javed had a vague idea for the sequence but no dialogue.

They kept postponing it until, on the eve of a flight, Javed Akhtar had no choice but to write it. True to habit, he woke up late and ended up drafting the lines while travelling to the airport, finishing them on the bonnet of a car. That improvised morning’s work became one of the film’s most quoted sequences. Initially, ‘Sholay’ wasn’t even conceived as a multi-starrer. It was only while writing that Javed Akhtar realised there were two or three characters rich with potential and decided to develop them further. GP Sippy, the film’s producer, matched that creative ambition with technological boldness, deciding to make the film in 70mm with stereophonic sound—a first for Hindi cinema.

On the technical front, ‘Sholay’ hides more makeshift magic than most people realise. That iconic train chase, or the massacre of Thakur’s family - wasn’t built on Hollywood-style precision but on clever improvisation. British stunt performers were brought in not for show, but to solve practical problems. The dusty fights, the crashes, the cliff-edge stunts—many were crafted with patched-up rigs, smart camera angles, and sheer nerve when something broke.

What looked epic on screen often came from shortages—no crane, a broken track, or a stuntman who refused to wait. Even its opening screening almost fell apart. At the Mumbai premiere in Minerva Theatre, the projector broke down halfway through. Ramesh Sippy ran into the booth, rethreaded the reels, calmed the audience, and coaxed the film back to life, literally saving its first public outing.

Today, ‘Sholay’ doesn’t just belong to the people who made it—it belongs to all of us. It echoes through school plays, late-night banter, political speeches, and even advertising. Yet its immortality didn’t arrive in one glorious burst—it was built over time, through countless repetitions.

Every mimicry, every tribute skit, and every offhand quote added another brick to its cultural temple. But behind that temple were human costs: Hema Malini’s quiet frustrations over edits, Salim-Javed’s battles to protect their lines, stuntmen improvising on the fly, and actors delivering career-defining performances for modest pay. Nostalgia tends to smooth over those rough edges, but the truth is sharper. ‘Sholay’ wasn’t born perfect; it was repaired, finessed, and fought for. It survived political pressure, creative compromise, technical failure—and half a century later, it still grips us because it bled to live.