Sholay Opened on 15 August 1975, Played at Mumbai's Minerva Theatre Until 1980 and Was Restored in 4K in 2025 with the Ending the Censors Cut

Sholay opened in cinemas on 15 August 1975. Ramesh Sippy directed it, his father G.P. Sippy produced it, and Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar wrote it. It was shot on the granite hills of Ramadevara Betta in Karnataka’s Ramanagara district, and it played at Mumbai’s Minerva theatre from 1975 until 1980. A restored cut with the original ending was shown in Bologna on 27 June 2025 and released on 1,500 screens in India on 12 December 2025.

A four-line idea and a finished script for a different film

Salim Khan told Open Magazine in 2019 that he and Javed Akhtar pitched the Sippys two stories as a writing team. One was a four-line idea that became Sholay. The other was a complete script called Majboor. Ramesh Sippy liked the finished script, Khan said, but G.P. Sippy picked Sholay because of its scale, and saw no sense in shooting Majboor in 70 mm with stereophonic sound.

Khan says the screenplay took about a month and the dialogues about six weeks, with Ramesh Sippy, Satish Bhatnagar and Narendra Bedi contributing. The writers were paid Rs 1.5 lakh for it. He names four Westerns as influences: The Magnificent Seven, The Dirty Dozen, The Five Man Army and Once Upon a Time in the West. The names Veeru and Jai came from his college friends in Indore, he says.

The film’s technical ambition is documented by the Film Heritage Foundation’s account, carried by The Week, which calls it India’s first 70 mm film and the first Hindi film with stereophonic sound. Il Cinema Ritrovato’s note adds that it was shot on 35 mm and blown up to 70 mm at the Technicolor laboratory in London.

Who played Thakur and Gabbar

Salim Khan says Dilip Kumar turned down the role of Thakur Baldev Singh, which went to Sanjeev Kumar. Sanjeev Kumar had wanted Gabbar Singh, but the writers felt his earlier sympathetic roles did not suit it. Danny Denzongpa was the other option, and he was filming Dharmatma in Afghanistan. Amjad Khan, a newcomer, was cast after a screen test.

Javed Akhtar told The Quint in 2015 that Amitabh Bachchan had been signed as Jai before Zanjeer was released, when he was not yet a major star. Deewaar came out in January 1975, he noted, and Sholay in August. Bachchan’s wider record is in our profile of his career.

Ramgarh was built on a Karnataka hill

A PTI report on the film’s 50th anniversary, published by DT Next, says filming began in October 1973 in Ramanagara district. Ramadevara Betta (betta means hill in Kannada) stood in for the village of Ramgarh and for Gabbar Singh’s lair. The crew built a township and a road from the Bangalore to Mysore highway to the sets, and a local resident, Bettayya, told the reporter that the Forest Department later tarred the road. Another resident, Boramma, who was seven when she appeared in a small role, said: “Ramadevara became famous because of ‘Sholay’.”

Accounts of how long the shoot lasted differ. Il Cinema Ritrovato says production took two and a half years. Film Companion says a six-month plan stretched to well over a year. Two versions of the anniversary report say nearly a year and a half (The Tribune) and nearly two and a half years (DT Next). Javed Akhtar recalled that some of the cast objected to the choice of Bangalore and wanted Rajasthan.

Karnataka Tourism lists Ramdevara Betta as the hill where Sholay was shot, with a temple at the top, an entry fee and parking, and advises going early in the morning and avoiding the monsoon, when fog and rain make the trail slippery. It gives the distance from Bangalore as 50 km on one page and 70 km on the page for the vulture sanctuary on the same hill, which was declared in 2012. That page describes it as India’s first vulture sanctuary, home to the critically endangered long-billed vulture, open from sunrise to sunset, with November to March as the best season. Outlook Traveller reports that locals call the hill “Sholay Betta” and that Ramanagara town carries murals of the film. These pages were read on 28 October 2026, and opening hours and fees should be checked with the forest department before a visit.

Two weeks of poor reviews

The film opened less than two months after the Emergency was declared on 25 June 1975, Outlook notes. The 70 mm stereophonic prints, mixed in London, were held at customs, so critics saw a standard 35 mm print, according to Outlook and Film Companion. Open Magazine reports two weeks of poor reviews in Bombay, with the trade paper Trade Guide mocking the title as “choley”.

Gulf News reports that newspapers called it a flop because of its cost. Ramesh Sippy has said the budget began at Rs 1 crore and rose to Rs 3 crore through delays and reshoots, while Open Magazine gives the cost as Rs 2.5 crore. Word of mouth brought audiences back. Open Magazine says the film’s standing changed after Polygram released its dialogues as a three-LP set.

Box-office totals from 1975 and later re-releases are not settled. Open Magazine gives Rs 15 crore, and Gulf News says it reportedly collected Rs 50 crore worldwide. Neither names a ledger, and the two figures are best read as estimates.

The Minerva run

Outlook reports an uninterrupted run at Mumbai’s Minerva cinema of 286 weeks, ending on 10 December 1980, and says the first 75 weeks were reportedly sold on advance booking. Yash Raj Films, in its release on Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, gives the run as five years, 1975 to 1980, and says that film broke the record in 2001. Outlook dates the change to August 2001. Dhanam Online puts the Minerva at 1,500 seats.

The week count and the end date as published do not quite agree with each other, because 286 weeks from 15 August 1975 would end in early 1981. Treat the weeks as a reported figure and the five years as the safer statement. Outlook adds that the film held silver jubilees in more than 100 theatres and a record 60 golden jubilees, and that it ran 103 weeks at the Jyoti cinema in Kolkata.

The ending the censors changed

In the original ending, Thakur kills Gabbar Singh with his spiked shoes. Il Cinema Ritrovato says the Censor Board insisted during the Emergency that the ending be changed to a watered-down climax. Dhanam Online reports that the objections were to a former policeman taking the law into his own hands and to stylised violence, and that after talks failed the crew reshot the scene so that Gabbar is captured. Film Companion says the new climax was shot in Bangalore with the release days away. Gulf News describes the version audiences knew for five decades as the one in which the police arrive to arrest Gabbar.

The Emergency’s legal framework is set out in our explainer on the constitutional provisions.

A special Filmfare award in 2005

At the 50th Filmfare Awards on 26 February 2005, a special award went to Ramesh Sippy, whose Sholay was adjudged the best film of the past 50 years, according to The Daily Star’s report of the ceremony.

Finding the film again

In 2022, Ramesh Sippy’s son Shehzad Sippy approached the Film Heritage Foundation about a restoration. Its director, Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, writes in The Tribune that the film cans stored in a Mumbai warehouse carried no labels, and that opening them turned up the original 35 mm camera and sound negatives. More elements were stored in the United Kingdom, and the British Film Institute helped the foundation get access to them. Reels from London and Mumbai went to the L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in Bologna.

The original camera negative had deteriorated too far to use, and no 70 mm print survives. Il Cinema Ritrovato lists the sources as an interpositive (a duplicate made from the negative), two colour reversal intermediates and a 1978 second-generation interpositive. A colour reversal intermediate found in London held the original ending and two deleted scenes, Dungarpur writes. The foundation acquired an Arri 2C camera, the model used on the film. The cinematographer Kamlakar Rao recalled the ground-glass markings made by Dwarka Divecha, and that guided the choice of a 2.2:1 frame. Sound came from the original sound negative and magnetic elements found in the Sippy Films office. The work took nearly three years.

The restored film runs 204 minutes and was shown at Piazza Maggiore in Bologna on 27 June 2025 at 21:45, according to the festival. The restoration of Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy is another Indian film rebuilt from surviving elements.

Gulf News reported on 7 October 2025 that the BFI London Film Festival would show the restored director’s cut at the BFI IMAX on 19 October 2025, the closing night. The Week reported on 16 November 2025 that Sippy Films would release Sholay: The Final Cut on 12 December 2025 on 1,500 screens across India, restored in 4K.