Amitabh Bachchan and Dharmendra’s film ‘Sholay’, released in 1975, broke all the records of earning at the box office at that time. Hema Malini was opposite Dharmendra in the film and Jaya Bachchan was opposite Amitabh. Apart from this, Amjad Khan and Sanjeev Kumar were also there. When the release date of this multi-starrer came near, everyone had hopes that the film would do a blast. The film’s writers Javed Akhtar and Salim Khan were also very confident about the success of this film.
However, when the film was released, something happened during that time which started having a bad effect on ‘Sholay’. This also terrified the director Ramesh Sippy. Actually, after the release of the film, some trade analysts declared Sholay a ‘flop’. Everyone associated with the film was stunned by this. But then something happened that made Sholay one of the most successful films of Hindi cinema history.
Sholay was so well-liked that the film ran for 25 weeks in a single theatre. According to the report of GlamSham, Salim Khan had told that some trade analyst had called Sholay a flop. He had said- ‘Yes it is true that when the film was released, Bollywood trade pundits had called it a flop, articles started coming on it, in which it was said.’
Although Javed and Salim were confident about their work. Salim had told me that ‘Javed sahib and I were confident that this could not happen. Instead of these negative reports, we got full-page advertisements printed and written that the film has earned Rs 1 crore. We had predicted the success of the film.
When the final box office collection of the film came, the predictions of the trade pundits turned out to be wrong. The guesses of Javed and Salim also turned out to be wrong. Actually, the film had earned not one but two crore rupees. According to the report, the film Sholay had earned a total of 15 crores in that era. According to today’s ticket rate, the film had earned as much as Rs 160 crore.
