It has been fifty years since the original release of Sholay. The film’s cast includes Amitabh Bachchan, Dharmendra, Hema Malini, Sanjeev Kumar and Amjad Khan. Sholay is back in theatres, coupled with its original ending that audiences will witness for the first time. The re-release has led director Ramesh Sippy to share an experience on how the film was accepted by the print media when it reached the silver screen for the first time.
Was Sholay declared a flop?
According to TOI, director Ramesh Sippy recollected in conversation with Siddharth Kannan that many newspapers initially described Sholay as a flop. The critics mentioned that the film’s high budget would wreck producers and even hurt the industry. He said the film’s opening weekend was not that huge of an affair, and trade experts felt the prediction was right after its lacklustre start. According to Sippy, the budget came in a figure between Rs 1 crore to around Rs 3 crore. The print media felt that such a big expense was perilous. It was about five weeks later, the critics retracted their early verdicts and acknowledged that they had a wrong perception about the film’s prospects.
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The Censor Board forced a new climax during the Emergency
The film faced a challenge of censorship during its first release. India was under the Emergency, and Sippy was forced by the censor board to shoot a different ending from what he had planned, therefore forbidding the original climax in which a police character kills the bandit Gabbar Singh. The forced change remained until now, but with this re-release, the film restores its original intended ending for contemporary audiences.
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The re-release of Sholay will be both a thing of nostalgia for the people of that generation and a taste of contemporary Bombay cinema for the new ones. The film has returned to the silver screens on December 12, 2025.
