This Day That Hit: When Dharmendra, Amitabh Bachchan & Salman Khan Ruled At The Box-Office!

This Day That Hit: This day saw the release of a lot of iconic films, with the most memorable ones being Sholay, Tere Naam and Ek Tha Tiger. Basically, the day saw the release of films starring 3 of the biggest superstars of Indian Cinema, and all of them proved to be successful ventures. Talking about Sholay first, it is rightly known as the biggest blockbuster of Indian cinema. The film directed by Ramesh Sippy starred Dharmendra, Amitabh Bachchan, Sanjeev Kumar, Hema Malini and Jaya Bachchan in lead and it rewrote all existing records at the Box-Office. The movie proved to be an all-time grosser by a humongous margin and raked in approximately Rs 15 to 16 crore in India.

The film sold more than 10 crore tickets back then, and still holds the record of being the film that got highest footfalls alongside Mughal-E-Azam. Back then, there was no transparency in terms of numbers and the success of films was gauged by the number of weeks it ran in cinema halls. And Sholay back then also emerged as one of the longest running films in history of Indian cinema.

While a lot of people in the trade initially tried to pull down the film by calling it a flop, it went on to earn more than Rs 1.00 crore at all territories in India thereby setting records all across. The movie was written by iconic writer duo, Salim-Javed, and alongside the star-cast, even the duo was one of the major selling point of the film. An interesting point to note here is the fact that Dharmendra was the first superstar to be signed on for the film and it was the legendary actor who recommended Amitabh Bachchan’s name to essay the character of Jai. The movie was slammed by the critics back then, but the audience reaction was extraordinary. Be it the music, dialogues or action, the film had everything in the right proportion to command a positive word of mouth. In-fact, Sholay is one of the very few films wherein all the characters got one iconic line, which is remembered even today. Although Rs 15.00 crore might seem to be a small number in today’s time, back then it was a huge sum given the fact that the ticket rates were extremely low. The lifetime record of Sholay stood for more than 18 years, which in itself proves how historic the film was.