James Bond or Tatya Tope: Who was in the original dialogue of Sholay?

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While those on social media wondered about the change, a couple of news reports also spoke of a fuming Javed Akhtar, who told a film journalist that “no one can tamper with this.”

Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, founder of Film Heritage Foundation, which has restored Sholay – The Final Cut in collaboration with Sippy Films, in a conversation with The Indian Express said that the new release comprises the dialogue from the 1975 film – one with James Bond. The swap, where James Bond was replaced by Tantya Tope in the new trailer “was an error on the producer’s part, who by mistake used the line from the scene that was shot first.”

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“Javed saab, originally, had written ‘Tantya Tope ke pote’ and the scene was shot with it. But after the Censor Board at the time had an issue with it, Salim-Javed changed it to ‘James Bond ki aulaad.’ In the restored version of the film that we are releasing, it is James Bond – the correct version so to say. But it is only in the trailer that the producer (Sippy Films) made a mistake. I was not involved with the making of the trailer,” said Dungarpur, who added that director Ramesh Sippy and Javed Akhtar were involved in the restoration process of the film and that re-release has all the dialogues that were released besides three additional scenes that were not there earlier and RD Burman’s original music.