New Delhi: Black marketeers minted money from selling Sholay tickets. Only four tickets were allotted to one person. As is typical in the industry, people said the film would only run for a week or two and then be forgotten.

The 1,500-seater Minerva Theatre at Grant Road in Mumbai proved lucky for Sholay. The audience watched the film on Cinemascope, not a 70mm print. The producer and owner of Minerva Theatre, Umesh Mehra, said, “Nobody noticed the difference. Everyone applauded how it looked and the scenes—probably due to Minerva’s sound and projection system, which was exceptional. The 70mm print arrived the next day.”

As it used to be in the past, the entire film industry was invited for the premiere, and murmurs of the film flopping at the box office had begun. Mehra said, “As is typical in the industry, people said the film would only run for a week or two and then be forgotten. But as everyone knows, it ran for two years, houseful in advance.”

So, when people said that the film wouldn’t work and would be........

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