It has been a long journey from the drawing board to the screens for Ranbir Kapoor’s Shamshera, but all is well that ends well. The film, also starring Sanjay Dutt and Vaani Kapoor, has finally sealed its date with the audience — July 22.

Considering it is one of the biggest productions to come out of the Yash Raj Films’ stable, producer Aditya Chopra and director Karan Malhotra have paid attention to every minute detail of the period drama. Cracking its background score was an uphill task. With the film set in India under the British Raj in the 19th century, the music not only had to be authentic to the milieu, but also had to do justice to the larger-than-life world that Malhotra had envisioned.

A source reveals, “Ranbir plays a dacoit in the film, with Sanjay essaying the role of his nemesis. Adi and Karan were clear that the background score had to match the grandeur of the film, especially the magnitude of conflict between the two leads. It took multiple sessions, and a lot of time for Karan and Mithoon to arrive at the perfect score.”

A portion of the composition has been used in the date announcement video that dropped online last week. “When a trailer or a video is made, there are so many elements at play to give the audiences maximum impact. One such element is the background score,” says the director.

Malhotra, who helmed Hrithik Roshan’s Agneepath (2012) in the past, believes that the score plays a crucial role in enhancing the story. Counting the dacoit drama as his most difficult project in that regard, he says, “The video is a glimpse of what the background score of Shamshera will finally deliver. Mithoon and I have spent an exhaustive seven months working on it. [We aim to] deliver a score that will give the audience a power-packed experience of the film.”