Hollywood has met Bollywood at the Academy Awards, and the makers of Oscar champ “Slumdog Millionaire” hope it’s a sign of future melding between the U.S. dream factory with its counterparts in India and elsewhere in the world.
The low-budget production was a merger of India’s brisk Bollywood movie industry, which provided most of the cast and crew, and the global marketing reach of Hollywood, which turned the film into a commercial smash, said British director Boyle.
“We’re Brits, really, trapped in the middle, but it’s a lovely trapped thing,” Boyle said backstage. “You can see it’s going to happen more and more. There’s all sorts of people going to work there. The world’s shrinking a little bit.”
Though set in a foreign land, the film tells a universal story of optimism that has been eagerly embraced by U.S. audiences.
“This country has changed, from the moment we started making the film to the moment it was released,” “Slumdog” producer Christian Colson said. “I think America is cool again, for the first time in my lifetime. … I think this is a symptom of how it’s beginning to embrace a more-globalized view of the world.”
