Slumdog Millionaire - Successes

To decided how successful Slumdog Millionaire was, many factors must be taken into account, rather than just weighing the box office money that the film took in. However, the box office draw was very impressive for Slumdog Millionaire, taking in $377m internationally, compared to a budget of only $15m, a relatively low amount for a film. This leaves a $360m profit solely from the box office, indicating that the film was very successful, especially in 2008, when the global crisis hit. However, this does not always mean that the film was 100% successful. The audience will determine if they think the film was good enough, because even though they have paid for the film, which contributes to the box office, they may not necessarily enjoy the film, or read the film in the way that Boyle or Beaufoy intended. There are three ways that the audience can read and interpret a film; Preferred, Oppositional and Negotiated. This is a really important point, and vital to determine how successful the film is. 

The film was labelled as a ‘feel good’ film in the UK posters, so it isn’t a surprise that the most common reading was the preferred reading, meaning that the film was successful. However, someone from the Washington Post, referred to only as ‘Simpson’, stated that Boyle is immensely clever, but does the safe option to crowd please. The safe option is created by the most basic things in order to create a stunner, when in fact, it is anything but. Tony Green takes it a little further by saying that the film was ‘miserable’, completely different to the quote on the film poster. Green goes on to say that the stereotypes created by Boyle don’t portray anything happy, it’s just miserable to watch, similar to what Simpson was talking about. Despite these negative reviews, which is typical of any film, even the Godfather, the greatest film of all time, the film was a massive success with plaudits and the audience, winning several awards, even the People’s Choice Awards in 2008, before it was even internationally released! This was huge the Peoples Choice Award is a huge award to win as it is known worldwide, meaning that the film had a social buzz around it on Facebook. 

Slumdog Millionaire obviously was a huge success, and this is evident with the amount of awards that it won. The awards it was nominated for was an probably endless, as there are thousands upon thousands of award in the world, but it did win 8 OSCAR’s, 4 Golden Globes and 7 BAFTA’s, illustrating that the film was a massive mainstream appeal, and wasn’t and appeal to a small market. The mainstream audience probably enjoyed the film because it follows a typical romantic genre plot. Two people in a relationship, who lose each other and spend the remainder of the film finding each other. Main streamers also started to follow Indian films, named Bollywood, the interest in the culture seemed to increase in the least few years because of the success of the film. 

Slumdog had a big influence on the making of some new things that the cast went on to do. Patel and Pinto, didn’t amount to much and very rarely appear in Western films, however Danny Boyle was massively successful afterwards being the director of the Opening Ceremony in the London 2012 Olympics, seen worldwide, a massive role for Boyle that cane as a result of how successful Slumdog Millionaire was, and his other films, like 127 Hours. 

Slumdog’s success was achieved quite bizarrely. The merchandise for the film was relatively low, not many people seemed to purchase any merchandise for the film, social media was new at the time, and not many people were avid users of the networking sites, so it seemed to rely on fantastic reviews by plaudits, and strong word of mouth by the audience. DVD’s, however, seemed to peak late on for the film, with it making $40m from domestic DVD sales, adding in to the Box Office sales to $400m. This all proves how successful the film was, it met the audiences expectations and reached out to the target audience. $400m, and maybe more, from only a budget of approximately $15m, is fantastic for each, and something Boyle and co should be proud of. 

Overall, it is obvious, however must be said that the film was a huge success, both domestically and internationally. The critical acclaim of the film was fantastic, with Rotten Tonatoes rating the film 92% from 32 reviews from top class critics, and IMDB gave the film a 8.4, very high for IMDB, who are known to be harsh for rating films. This praise from critics and the audience shows just how popular the film was world wide, and also shows the social buzz and cultural impact that the film had, with a new interest in Bollywood being born out of Slumdog's partially traditional Bollywood approach.

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