Gabbar
“Ye haath mujhe de de Thakur”, is one of the many famous dialogue of this movie. It is said that the film industry of India is categorized as pre Sholey and post Sholey. The book written by Anupama Chopra is crispy and covers even the finest details about the movie from concept to release. The author has penned down even the details like how the name of the characters ‘Gabbar’, ‘viru’ & ‘Jai’ evolved. It also covered the problems faced by the movie because of the censor board. It revealed that the story had a different ending, in which Gabbar was to be killed brutally by Thakur. Alas! it was changed on the request of the censor boards just two months before the release date of the evangelical brand Sholey.
This movie was the first Indian movie to be released in a 70mm format instead of the traditional 35mm. It was the biggest budget movie during the 70s with a budget of 1 crore rupees (which went upto 3 crores). This movie was the first to use its character ‘Gabbar’ to promote products like Britannia biscuits. The movie was the first Indian movie to give real credit to the script writers like Salim-Javed. However, such revolutionary initiatives attracted lot of discomfort in the entire film industry but this did not stop the Sippys from hiring the best talent for their dream project.
This movie also experimented with some marketing innovations by releasing the movie in both the 35mm and the 70mm format. It was the first movie to sell the music rights and also the first to release the only dialogue version in large scale. In the first week of the release the movie was not received well by the audience. The entire team went into depression but instead of losing hope went around to find the root cause of the problem. During this post release analysis they found that the viewers actually were lost in the movie and they did not even went out during the intervals. This review from a theater owner changed the way the movie was perceived. As a result this movie bounced back as one of the biggest hits of the time. A Super Duper hit, what we call in India.
Rogues
