Q. Sholay celebrated 40 years last week and all reports suggest it was a disaster on release and was nearly taken off cinemas but with such a film can this be the case?
Ans. No. The opening was historic beating the previous record holder Roti Kapada Aur Makaan by 35% on weekend collections. At the time there were two trade magazines and in usual style they had declared the film a flop to disaster as the reviewers in these magazines did not like the film. This was where the disaster thing came from, the collections told a different story. In Bengal trade these guys were referred as blind even before Sholay was released. The film opened on 15 Aug 1975 on 40 theatres in Mumbai circuit, 32 in Mumbai city and 8 in Ahmedabad. It collected 7,52,362 from these 40 theatres over the weekend, every single show was housefull. There was a slight issue on the weekdays in Mumbai city as the film was not going full in advance and current booking was open. This was probably because it was a dacait action film and in Mumbai it was the non action films like Bobby and Roti Kapada Aur Makaan which were creating history till Sholay happened.  Still it ended with 96% collections over the week. On 22 Aug 1975, it opened in East Punjab to miracle collections as the theatre rentals were nearly covered by the extra seats that exhibitors had to put in the theaters. It recorded 118% occupancy over the week. East Punjab was an action circuit, the same happened again in October 1975 when it opened in Delhi/UP and East India.

C. Shastri

Q. Last week you said that Sholay had a historic opening then why is it that you read everywhere that it had a disaster opening and makers wanted to change the film?.
Ans. At the time business was not about the weekend or first week and a huge film like Sholay had to do a multiple centre jubilee to cover its cost and with such poor feedback from trade, reviewers and the industry in general, the makers would have been worried that collections will come down and film will not run so they may have thought what could be changed. Looking at collections it beat every initial record that had been set by Roti Kapada Aur Makaan the previous record holder for initial records.

M. Shukla