Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar were the once top writers of Bollywood. They made Amitabh Bachchan a star and every actor wanted to work with them. However, once Rishi Kapoor declined a role in their film Trishul, which didn’t sit well with Salim Khan.
In his autobiography, Khullam Khulla, Rishi Kapoor recalled how Salim Khan threatened him when he refused to do the film Trishul. He wrote that Salim-Javed ‘bristled’ at his rejection, and the animosity ‘bubbled to the surface’ when he ran into Salim at a Mumbai hotel. He wrote, “I was playing a game of snooker when Salim Saab walked over and asked me, ‘How did you have the guts to refuse Salim–Javed?’ Not one to be intimidated, I shot back, ‘I didn’t like the role.’”
Rishi continued, “Salim Saab boasted to me, ‘Do you know that to this day nobody has said no to us? We can destroy your career.’" Rishi Kapoor further wrote, “He said, ‘Who will work with you? You know, we had offered Zanjeer to Rajesh Khanna and he turned us down. We didn’t do anything to him but we created an alternative to him, a hero called Amitabh Bachchan, who destroyed Rajesh Khanna. We will do the same to you.’"
However, their feud died down soon. Trishul eventually starred Amitabh Bachchan as lead. The film became the second highest-grossing film of 1978 and was declared super hit at the box office. Salim-Javed wrote 24 films together between 1971 and 1987, of which 20 were commercially and critically successful.
Salim-Javed were the writers who were paid even more than the lead actors of their films. were reportedly paid Rs 21 lakh per film while Amitabh Bachchan, India’s highest-paid actor earned Rs 20 lakh. Others like Rajesh Khanna (Rs 12 lakh), Shatrughan Sinha (Rs 10 lakh), and Rishi Kapoor (Rs 10 lakh) earned even less.
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