Director Ramesh Sippy's Sholay hit the screens on August 15, 1975 to coincide with the celebrations of Independence Day. The film's poster played it up as the 'greatest story ever told' with the 'greatest star cast ever assembled'. Said to be inspired from Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954) and Sergio Leone's Once Upon A Time In The West (1968), Sholay was a 204-minute tale of crime and punishment. But the initial dismissal of the film as 'a poor imitation of spaghetti Westerns' left Ramesh Sippy distraught.