Slumdog Millionaire
Slumdog Millionaire is a 2008 British drama film directed by Danny Boyle,[6] written bySimon Beaufoy, and produced by Christian Colson. Set and filmed in India, it is a loose adaptation of the novel Q & A (2005) by Indian author and diplomat Vikas Swarup, telling the story of Jamal Malik, age 18, from the Juhuslums of Mumbai.[7] As a contestant on theIndian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? who is able to answer every stage correctly, he is accused of cheating. Jamal recounts his history, illustrating how he is able to answer each question.
After its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival and later screenings at the Toronto International Film Festival and the London Film Festival,[8] Slumdog Millionaire had a nationwide release in the United Kingdom on 9 January 2009, in India on 22 January 2009,[9] and in the United States on 23 January 2009.[10]
Regarded as a sleeper hit, Slumdog Millionairewas widely acclaimed, being praised for its plot, soundtrack and direction. It was nominated for ten Academy Awards in 2009and won eight—the most for any 2008 film—including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay. It won seven BAFTA Awards including Best Film, five Critics' Choice Awards and four Golden Globes. However it was also the subject of controversy, especially in India, due to its portrayal of Indian Society, of Hindus, the use of the word "Slumdog" in the title and perceived exploitation of some of the younger actors, among other issues.
Plot
18-year-old Jamal Malik, an Indian Muslim from the Dharavi slum, is a contestant on theIndian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, and is one question away from the grand prize. However, before the₹20 million (US$310,000) question, he is detained and tortured by the police, who suspect him of cheating because of the impossibility of a simple "slumdog" with very little education knowing all the answers. Jamal recounts, through flashbacks, the incidents in his life which provided him with each answer.
Jamal's flashbacks begin with his managing, at age five, to obtain the autograph ofBollywood star Amitabh Bachchan, which his brother Salim then sells, followed immediately by the death of his mother during the Bombay riots. As they flee the riot, the brothers meet Latika, a girl from their slum. Salim is reluctant to take her in, but Jamal suggests that she could be the "third musketeer", a character from the Alexandre Dumas novelThe Three Musketeers (which they had been studying—albeit not very diligently—in school), whose name they do not know.
The three are found by Maman—a gangsterwho tricks and then trains street children into becoming beggars. When Salim discovers Maman is blinding the children in order to make them more effective beggars, he flees with Jamal and Latika to a departing train. Latika fails to board the train as Salim purposefully lets go of her hand, in revenge for an extremely embarrassing prank that Latika had played on Salim. This resulted in her being recaptured by Maman. Over the next few years, Salim and Jamal make a living travelling on top of trains, selling goods,picking pockets, working as dish washers, and pretending to be tour guides at the Taj Mahal, where they also steal people's shoes. At Jamal's insistence, they return to Mumbai to find Latika, discovering that she is being raised by Maman to be a prostitute, soon to fetch him a high price as a virgin. The brothers rescue her, and while escaping Maman they shoot him to death. Salim then manages to get a job with Javed—Maman's rival crime lord. Back at their room, Salim orders Jamal to leave him and Latika alone. When Jamal refuses, Salim draws a gun on him, whereas Latika persuades Jamal to obey his brother and go away.
Years later, Jamal, now a Chaiwala in an Indian call centre, searches the centre's database for Salim and Latika. He fails in finding Latika, while succeeding in finding Salim, now a high-ranking lieutenant in Javed's crime organisation. Jamal reproaches Salim, who then pleads for forgiveness, and offers him to stay in his luxurious apartment. Jamal later bluffs his way into Javed's residence to reunite with Latika but as he professes his love for her, Latika asks him to forget about her. Jamal nevertheless promises to wait for her every day at five o'clock at the VT station. Latika attempts to meet him there, but is recaptured by Javed's men, led by Salim, and once Javed moves to another house, outside Mumbai, the two again lose contact. Jamal becomes a contestant onWho Wants to Be a Millionaire?, knowing that she watches the show regularly. Much to the consternation of Prem Kumar, the show's host, Jamal becomes a wonder across India. He uses the 50/50 lifeline on the penultimate question and during the following break, whilst in the men's room, Kumar tries to fool Jamal, feeding him with a wrong answer, yet Jamal chooses the other one, which turns out to be the correct answer.
Assuming Jamal is cheating, the police are involved. After an initial beating, the police inspector listens to Jamal's explanation of how he reached each answer. Finding all of them "bizarrely plausible", he allows him back on the show. At Javed's safehouse, Latika sees Jamal on the news and Salim, in an effort to make amends for his past behaviour, gives Latika his mobile phone and car keys, and asks her to forgive him and to go to Jamal. Latika is reluctant out of fear of Javed, but agrees and escapes. Salim fills a bathtub with money and sits in it, awaiting for Javed and his men as they realize that he let Latika free. Jamal's final question is the name of the third musketeer in The Three Musketeers, which he never learned. Jamal uses his "Phone-A-Friend" lifeline to call Salim's cell, as it is the only phone number he knows. Latika answers the phone, and, while she does not know the answer, tells Jamal that she is safe. Relieved, Jamal arbitrarily picks Aramis, the right answer, and wins the grand prize. Javed hears Latika on the show and realises that Salim has betrayed him. He and his men break down the bathroom door but Salim kills Javed before he is shot, gasping, "God is great". Soon thereafter, Jamal and Latika meet on the platform at the railway station and they kiss.
Cast
- Dev Patel as Jamal Malik, a boy born and raised in the poverty of Bombay/Mumbai.[11] Boyle considered hundreds of young male actors, and he found that Bollywood leads were generally "strong, handsome hero-types". Boyle's daughter pointed Dev Patel out from his role in the British television ensemble drama Skins.[12][13]
- Ayush Mahesh Khedekar as child Jamal
- Tanay Chheda as teenage Jamal
- Freida Pinto as Latika, a girl from the streets who joins Jamal and Salim, then disappears; Jamal spends years hunting for her. Pinto was an Indian model who had not starred in a feature film before.[12]Regarding the "one of a kind" scarf she wears, designer Suttirat Anne Larlarb says, "I wanted to bookend the journey—to tie her childhood yellow dress to her final look."[14]
- Rubina Ali as child Latika
- Tanvi Ganesh Lonkar as teenage Latika
- Madhur Mittal as Salim K. Malik, Jamal's elder brother
- Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail as child Salim
- Ashutosh Lobo Gajiwala as teenage Salim
- Anil Kapoor as Prem Kumar, the game show host. Boyle initially wanted Indian actor Shahrukh Khan to play the role.[15]Khan had hosted the 2007 series of Kaun Banega Crorepati, the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Kapoor has also starred as a guest on the show withAmitabh Bachchan and won Rs 5,000,000.
- Irrfan Khan as Police Inspector
- Saurabh Shukla as Police Constable Srinivas
- Mahesh Manjrekar as Javed Khan, crime boss
- Ankur Vikal as Maman
- Rajendranath Zutshi as the Millionaire show producer
- Sanchita Choudhary as Jamal's mother
- Mia Drake Inderbitzin as Adele, American tourist
- Siddhesh Patil as Arvind, blind beggar
- Arfi Lamba as Bardi
- Shruti Seth as voice accent trainer
Production
Screenwriter Simon Beaufoy wrote Slumdog Millionaire based on the Boeke Prize-winning and Commonwealth Writers' Prize-nominated novel Q & A by Vikas Swarup.[16] To hone the script, Beaufoy made three research trips to India and interviewed street children, finding himself impressed with their attitudes. The screenwriter said of his goal for the script: "I wanted to get (across) the sense of this huge amount of fun, laughter, chat, and sense of community that is in these slums. What you pick up on is this mass of energy."
By the summer of 2006, British production companies Celador Films and Film4 Productions invited director Danny Boyle to read the script of Slumdog Millionaire. Boyle hesitated, since he was not interested in making a film about Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, which was produced by Celador.[12] Then Boyle learned that the screenwriter was Beaufoy, who had writtenThe Full Monty (1997), one of the director's favourite British films, and decided to revisit the script.[17] Boyle was impressed by how Beaufoy wove the multiple storylines from Swarup's book into one narrative, and the director decided to commit to the project. The film was projected to cost $15 million, so Celador sought a US film distributor to share costs. Warner Independent Pictures stepped up with $5 million and won rights to the picture.[12]
Gail Stevens came on board to oversee casting globally. Stevens had worked with Boyle throughout his career and was well known for discovering new talent. Meredith Tucker was appointed to cast out of the US. The film-makers then travelled to Mumbai in September 2007 with a partial crew and began hiring local cast and crew for production in Karjat. Originally appointed as one of the five casting directors in India,Loveleen Tandan has stated, "I suggested to Danny and Simon Beaufoy, the writer ofSlumdog, that it was important to do some of it in Hindi to bring the film alive [...] They asked me to pen the Hindi dialogues which I, of course, instantly agreed to do. And as we drew closer to the shoot date, Danny asked me to step in as the co-director."[18] Boyle then decided to translate nearly a third of the film's English dialogue into Hindi. The director fibbed to Warner Independent's president that he wanted 10% of the dialogue in Hindi, and she approved the change.[citation needed] Filming locations included shooting in Mumbai's megaslum and in shantytown parts of Juhu, so film-makers controlled the crowds by befriending onlookers.[12] Filming began on 5 November 2007.[13]
In addition to Swarup's original novel Q & A, the film was also inspired by Indian cinema.[19] Tandan has referred to Slumdog Millionaire as a homage to Hindi cinema, noting that "Simon Beaufoy studied Salim-Javed's kind of cinema minutely."[20] Boyle has cited the influence of several Bollywoodfilms set in Mumbai.[i] Deewaar (1975), which Boyle described as being "absolutely key to Indian cinema", is a crime film written by Salim-Javed based on the Bombay gangsterHaji Mastan, portrayed by Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan, whose autograph Jamal seeks at the beginning ofSlumdog Millionaire.[19] Anil Kapoor noted that some scenes of the film "are like Deewaar, the story of two brothers of whom one is completely after money while the younger one is honest and not interested in money."[21]Slumdog Millionaire has a similar narrative structure to Deewaar.[22] Satya (1998), written by Saurabh Shukla (who plays Constable Srinivas in Slumdog Millionaire), and Company(2002), based on the D-Company, both offered "slick, often mesmerising portrayals of theMumbai underworld" and displayed realistic "brutality and urban violence." Boyle has also stated that the chase in one of the opening scenes of Slumdog Millionaire was based on a "12-minute police chase through the crowdedDharavi slum" in Black Friday (2007), adapted from Hussein Zaidi's book of the same name about the 1993 Bombay bombings.[19][23][24][25]
Boyle has cited other Indian films as influences in later interviews.[ii][26] The rags-to-riches, underdog theme was also a recurring theme in classic Bollywood movies from the 1950s through to the 1980s, when "India worked to lift itself from hunger and poverty."[27] Other classic Bollywood tropes in the film include "the fantasy sequences" and the montage sequence where "the brothers jump off a train and suddenly they are seven years older".[26]
The producer's first choice for the role of Prem Kumar was Shahrukh Khan,[28] an established Bollywood star and host of the 2007 series of Kaun Banega Crorepati (the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?). However, Khan turned down the role, concerned that he did not want to give his audience the impression that the real show was a fraud by playing a fraud host in the movie.[citation needed] Despite the subsequent success of the film, Khan has stated that he does not regret turning the role down,[28] and has been a vociferous supporter of the film to its critics.[29] Paul Smith, the executive producer of Slumdog Millionaire and the chairman of Celador Films, previously owned the international rights to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?[30]
Release and box office performance
In August 2007, Warner Independent Picturesacquired the North American rights and Pathéthe international rights to distribute Slumdog Millionaire theatrically.[13] However, in May 2008, Warner Independent Pictures was shut down, with all of its projects being transferred to Warner Bros., its parent studio. Warner Bros. doubted the commercial prospects ofSlumdog Millionaire and suggested that it would go straight to DVD without a US theatrical release.[31] In August 2008, the studio began searching for buyers for various productions, to relieve its overload of end-of-the-year films.[32] Halfway through the month, Warner Bros. entered into a pact with Fox Searchlight Pictures to share distribution of the film, with Fox Searchlight buying 50% of Warner Bros.'s interest in the movie and handling US distribution.[33]
Following its success at the 81st Academy Awards, the film topped the worldwide box office (barring North America), grossing $16 million from 34 markets in the week following the Academy Awards.[34] Worldwide, the film has currently grossed over $377 million,[5] becoming Fox Searchlight Pictures's highest-grossing film ever (surpassing Juno).
Australia
The Australian 2008 release of Slumdog Millionaire was produced by Icon Film Distribution.[citation needed]
North America
Slumdog Millionaire was first shown at theTelluride Film Festival on 30 August 2008, where it was positively received by audiences, generating "strong buzz".[35] The film also screened at the Toronto International Film Festival on 7 September 2008, where it was "the first widely acknowledged popular success" of the festival,[36] winning the People's Choice Award.[37] Slumdog Millionaire debuted with a limited North American release on 12 November 2008, followed by a nationwide release in the United States on 23 January 2009.[38]
After debuting on a Wednesday, the film grossed $360,018 in 10 theatres in its first weekend, a strong average of $36,002 per theatre.[39][40] In its second weekend, it expanded to 32 theatres and made $947,795, or an average of $29,619 per theatre, representing a drop of only 18%.[39] In the 10 original theatres that it was released in, viewership went up 16%, and this is attributed to strong word-of-mouth.[41] The film expanded into wide release on 25 December 2008 at 614 theatres and earned $5,647,007 over the extended Christmas weekend.[38]Following its success at the 81st Academy Awards, the film's takings increased by 43%,[42] the most for any film since Titanic.[43]In the weekend of 27 February to 1 March, the film reached its widest release at 2,943 theatres.[44] The film has grossed over $140 million at the North American box office.[5]
The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray in the United States on 31 March 2009. The film opened at No. 2 in the DVD sales chart, making $14.16m off 842,000 DVD units.[45] As of 12 November 2009, an estimated 1,964,962 DVD units have been sold, translating to $31.32m in revenue. This figure does not include Blu-ray sales/DVD rentals.[45] It had previously been announced that 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment would be starting a new marketing program with two versions of each release: a stripped-down minimal version for the rental market, and a traditional full version with "bonus extra" features, such as commentary and "making of" material for the retail market. The release production was mixed up; some full versions were shipped in rental cases, and some retail versions were missing the extras despite their being listed on the outside of the box. Public apologies were issued by Fox and Amazon.[46]
Europe
The film was released in the United Kingdom on 9 January 2009, and opened at No. 2 at the UK box office.[47] The film reached No. 1 in its second weekend and set a UK box office record, as the film's takings increased by 47%. This is the "biggest ever increase for a UK saturation release," breaking "the record previously held by Billy Elliot's 13%." This record-breaking "ticket surge" in the second weekend came after Slumdog Millionaire won four Golden Globes and received elevenBAFTA nominations. The film grossed £6.1 million in its first eleven days of release in the UK.[48] The takings increased by another 7% the following weekend, bringing the film's gross up to £10.24 million for its first seventeen days in the UK,[49][50] and up to £14.2 million in its third week.[51]
As of 20 February 2009, the film's UK box office gross was £22,973,110,[52] making it "the eighth biggest hit at UK cinemas of the past 12 months."[53] In the week ending 1 March 2009, following its success at the 81st Academy Awards where it won eight Oscars, the film returned to No. 1 at the UK box office,[54] grossing £26 million as of 2 March 2009.[55] As of 17 May 2009, the total UK gross was over £31.6 million.[56] The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray on 1 June 2009.
The film's success at the Academy Awards led to it seeing large increases in takings elsewhere in Europe the following week. Its biggest single country increase was in Italy, where it was up 556% from the previous week. The takings in France and Spain also increased by 61% and 73% respectively. During the same week, the film debuted in other European countries with successful openings: in Croatia it grossed $170,419 from 10 screens, making it the biggest opening there in the last four months; and in Poland it opened in second place with a gross of $715,677. The film was released in Sweden on 6 March 2009 and in Germany on 19 March 2009.[34]
India
In India, the premiere of Slumdog Millionairetook place in Mumbai on 22 January 2009 and was attended by major personalities of the Indian film industry, with more than a hundred attending this event.[57] A dubbedHindi version, Slumdog Crorepati (स्लमडॉग करोड़पति), was also released in India in addition to the original version of the film.[58]Originally titled Slumdog Millionaire: Kaun Banega Crorepati, the name was shortened for legal reasons. Loveleen Tandan, who supervised the dubbing, stated, "All the actors from the original English including Anil Kapoor, Irrfan Khan and Ankur Vikal dubbed the film. We got a boy from Chembur, Pratik Motwani to dub for the male lead Dev Patel. I didn't want any exaggerated dubbing. I wanted a young unspoilt voice."[59] The film was also dubbed in Tamil as Naanum Kodeeswaran, with Silambarasan dubbing for Patel,[60] while S. P. Balasubrahmanyam andRadha Ravi dubbed for Kapoor and Khan respectively.[61]
Fox Searchlight released 351 prints of the film across India for its full release there on 23 January 2009.[62] It earned ₹23,545,665(equivalent to ₹42 million or US$650,000 in 2017) in its first week at the Indian box office,[63] or $2.2 million according to Fox Searchlight. Though not as successful as major Bollywood releases in India during its first week, this was the highest weekend gross for any Fox film and the third highest for any Western release in the country, trailing only Spider-Man 3 and Casino Royale.[62] In its second week, the film's gross rose to₹30,470,752 (equivalent to ₹55 million or US$840,000 in 2017) at the Indian box office.[63]
A few analysts have offered their opinions about the film's performance at the Indian box office. Trade analyst Komal Nahta commented, "There was a problem with the title itself. Slumdog is not a familiar word for majority Indians." In addition, trade analyst Amod Mehr has stated that with the exception of Anil Kapoor, the film lacks recognisable stars and that "the film... is not ideally suited for Indian sentiment." A cinema owner commented that "to hear slum boys speaking perfect English doesn't seem right but when they are speaking in Hindi, the film seems much more believable." The dubbed Hindi version, Slumdog Crorepati, did better at the box office, and additional copies of that version were released.[64] Following the film's success at the 81st Academy Awards, the film's takings in India increased by 470% the following week, bringing its total up to $6.3 million that week.[34] As of 15 March 2009, Slumdog Crorepati had grossed₹158,613,802 (equivalent to ₹280 million or US$4.3 million in 2017) at the Indian box office.[65]
Asia-Pacific
The film's success at the Academy Awards led to it seeing large increases in takings in the Asia-Pacific region. In Australia, the takings increased by 53%, bringing the film up to second place there.[34] In Hong Kong, the film debuted taking $1 million in its opening weekend, making it the second biggest opening of the year there.[34] The film was released in Japan on 18 April 2009, South Korea on 19 March 2009, China on 26 March 2009, Vietnam on 10 April 2009,[34] and 11 April 2009 in the Philippines.
In particular, the film was a major success in East Asia. In the People's Republic of China, the film grossed $2.2 million in its opening weekend (27–29 March). In Japan, the film grossed $12 million, the most the film has grossed in any Asian country.[66]
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