Poster produced for Hindi feature film 'Sholay'

Poster produced for the classic blockbuster film 'Sholay' (trans. Embers), directed by Ramesh Sippy and released on 15th August 1975. Starring Dharmendra, Sanjeev Kumar, Hema Malini, Amitabh Bachchan, Jaya Bhaduri and Amjad Khan — all featured in a row of images at the top end of the poster (and referred to as 'The Greatest Star-Cast Ever Assembled!"). Sholay' received negative critical reviews and a tepid commercial response when first released, but favourable word-of-mouth publicity helped it to become a box office success. It went on to break records for continuous showings in many theatres across India, and ran for more than five years at Mumbai's Minerva theatre. Heavily inspired by the Western, certain dialogues, scenes and characters from the film became extremely popular, contributing to numerous cultural memes and becoming part of the vernacular reference framework.