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From the outset, this certainly didn’t look like a worldwide hit. Looking at the cast list, the only big names would be Anil Kapoor and Irrfan Kahn, two names that would still prompt the majority of western audiences to say, “Who?” In particular, the film’s leads Dev Patel and Freida Pinto had never acted in a feature film before. Most of the film’s posters are pretty awful. The US one sheet looks like florescent vomit. The UK poster features the grown up Jamal and Latika smiling amid a rain of confetti, with a quote from the then News of the World critic Robbie Collin included, calling it “The feel-good film of the decade.” Boyle himself was not particularly happy with this marketing slant, saying, “You can’t go in expecting it to be Mamma Mia!” The trailer, however, with A R Rahman’s Latika’s Theme playing over the opening, cleverly highlights the fairy tale aspect of what audiences might be in for.

Slumdog Millionaire had its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival on August 30, 2008, and subsequently played at the Toronto, Austin, Chicago and London Film Festivals over the following months (it won the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival). This is where the strong word of mouth began, as the film started generating a lot of buzz, positive early reviews and some talk about Oscar.

Slumdog Millionaire opened in limited release in the US at just 10 theaters on Wednesday, November 12, 2008. It earned $427,715 over its opening five days and ranked at #24 for the weekend. In the second week Fox expanded the film to 32 venues. It earned $947,795 and jumped up to #11. Word-of-mouth coupled with positive reviews was clearly working. Fox slowly expanded the film to more cities each week and its weekend gross continued to climb. During the film’s sixth week of release, it finally crept into the top ten, landing at #8 with a weekend take of $3 million. It had earned a total of $12 million at this point.

On Sunday, January 11, 2009, the film won four Golden Globe awards. On the strength of this, the following weekend (its tenth week of release) the film charted at #10 with a weekend gross of $5.8 million. On Thursday January 22, 2009, the 81st Academy Award nominations were announced, with Slumdog Millionaire receiving ten nominations. Fox capitalized on this and the following day expanded the film into over 1,400 theaters. The film earned $10.6 million in its 11th week of release, charting at #5.

On Sunday, February 22, 2009, the film dominated at the Academy Awards and won eight Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. Two days later on February 24th and the film crossed the $100 million mark on its 105th day of release. The weekend after its success at the Academy Awards, the film was playing at over 2,900 theaters and achieved its highest chart position and weekend gross, landing at #3 with a take of $12 million.

Slumdog Millionaire ran for 28 weeks (12 of which were in the US top ten) and earned $141.31 million at the US box office. It became one of Fox Searchlight’s highest grossing films, while for Fox it was one their highest grossing films of 2008 in the US, surpassing the likes of 27 Dresses, Jumper and What Happens in Vegas. With $236.59 million earned overseas ($52 million from the UK alone), Slumdog Millionaire had managed to earn a total of $377.9 worldwide. It is Danny Boyle’s highest grossing film to date.

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