'Slumdog': From mutt to 'Millionaire'

Some movies can generate a spellbinding silence: a collective hush of audience anticipation, proof that the film has captured the attention of everyone in the theater. The deadly quiet that Danny Boyle heard in "Slumdog Millionaire's" first Hollywood screening was of a very different nature -- evidence that his underdog drama faced even longer odds than his film's uneducated game-show contestant.

Boyle and his filmmaking collaborators have said that "Slumdog Millionaire" has enjoyed so much good fortune it is almost as if destiny has guided it toward tonight's Academy Awards, where the film is a heavy favorite to win the best picture Oscar. But at the moment the film arrived in town, "Slumdog Millionaire's" fate looked bleaker, particularly after its initial showing inside an upstairs screening room at Warner Bros. last June 12.

Much has been written about the film's against-all-odds passage -- how a heavily subtitled film with no recognizable stars escaped the closure of its American distributor to become an awards-season steamroller, with domestic ticket sales set to pass $100 million. Yet the inside tale of "Slumdog Millionaire's" brush with a possible direct-to-video release -- and the behind-the-scenes machinations that brought the film to a new, enthusiastic distributor -- has received far less attention.

By some measure, the film's accomplishments are no less remarkable than the winning-answer streak delivered by the movie's protagonist in India's version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." In reality, "Slumdog Millionaire" was nearly sent packing in the first round.

Boyle and his producer, Christian Colson, had traveled from London to Burbank with a video copy of "Slumdog," both excited and nervous about showing their $14-million film's rough cut to Warner Bros. executives. The studio's specialty-film division, Warner Independent Pictures, had been the only American movie company to bid on the film's U.S. distribution rights, but soon after Boyle wrapped filming in Mumbai early last year, Warners decided to close WIP, focusing instead on mass-appeal movies such as "The Dark Knight."

With every passing week in the editing room, Boyle and Colson believed their movie was improving dramatically, but they also knew that the film's advocates were vanishing: the WIP executives who had paid $5 million for "Slumdog Millionaire's" domestic rights either had left the company or were on their final days.