Mumbai: Danny Boyle’s acclaimed hit Slumdog Millionaire has reached $3.8 million at the North American box office surpassing the $3.4 million of the Hrithik Roshan-Aishwarya Rai Bachchan epic Jodhaa Akbar to become the highest grossing Indian movie of 2008.
The Fox Searchlight release has done this after only three weeks in theaters while playing in only 49 locations. Released in February, Jodhaa Akbar had played much wider in 125 theaters and earned its total gross over nine weeks. Slumdog Millionaire will continue to open in more theaters nationwide throughout the month of December and will see its box office gross continue to climb. Though financed in the U.K., the film’s setting, story, and characters are all Indian. In India, the movie will be released in January by Fox Star Studios.
On 30 November, Slumdog Millionaire won three British Independent Film Awards for Best Film, Best Director, and the Most Promising Newcomer prize for 18-year-old actor Dev Patel. The song Paper Planes by MIA, which is featured on the Slumdog Millionaire soundtrack, earned a Grammy Award nomination for Record of the Year on 3 December. The following day the film was named Best Picture of the Year by the National Board of Review, which also honored it in two other categories – Best Breakthrough Performance by an Actor for Patel and Best Adapted Screenplay (tie) for Simon Beaufoy.
