Bollywood's cult classic Sholay celebrated its 49th anniversary this year. Directed by Ramesh Sippy, the film featured Amitabh Bachchan and Dharmendra in the lead roles. The screenplay was written by the legendary writer duo Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar. To honour the legacy of these two veterans, a special screening of Sholay was held on August 31 in Mumbai. The event was attended by Salman Khan, Zoya Akhtar, Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Siddharth Roy Kapur, Kunaal Roy Kapur and Vikramaditya Motwane, alongside the screenwriting legends themselves. On Monday, Tiger Baby Films (Zoya Akhtar's production house) shared photos from the event on Instagram. The post was captioned with the iconic dialogue from the movie, "Kitne Aadmi The?"
Before the screening, Javed Akhtar addressed the fans present at the event, reported PTI. He said, "This usually doesn't happen with writers." Expanding on the writing process of the film, Javed Akhtar added, "When Salim sahab and I wrote this script, we had no idea that it was going to be a big film. When we started the film, we didn't know it would have a big cast. As the screenplay developed, it slowly turned upon us that we can have many stars in the picture because the roles are such. It was not planned to be a multi-starrer film; perhaps that's the beauty of it. It had an organic growth.”
The Sholay screening was organised by not-for-profit organisation Film Heritage Foundation (FHF) in collaboration with Salman Khan's production company Salman Khan Films, Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani's Excel Media Entertainment and Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti's Tiger Baby Films.
Sholay follows the story of a former police officer Thakur Baldev Singh (played by Sanjeev Kumar), who tries to take down notorious bandit Gabbar Singh (Amjad Khan) in the village of Ramgarh. He enlists the aid of two low-level criminals, Jai (Amitabh Bachchan) and Veeru (Dharmendra). While initially not motivated enough to take the mission seriously, the duo soon learn that Thakur can't defend the village because Gabbar has already amputated his arms. This discovery inspires Jai and Veeru to help Thakur. The cast of the film also includes Jaya Bachchan and Hema Malini.
On the work front, Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar were last seen in the documentary series Angry Young Men, which explores their lives . The three-part documentary, directed by Namrata Rao, released on Prime Video in August.