Slumdog, which cost only $15 million (£8.7 million) to make, has already gone on to take $160 million (£117 million) at the box office worldwide and could double this sum after last night’s haul of eight Oscars, including Best Picture. It is likely to go on earning millions of dollars a year for decades to come, thanks to DVD sales, TV licensing, and revenues from internet streaming.
It was during a crisis of confidence last spring that Warner Bros decided to hedge its relatively small bet (around $5 million) on Slumdog by handing over 50 per cent of the US distribution rights to Fox Searchlight, part of News Corporation, parent company of The Times.
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At the same time, Warner Bros decided to shut down its Warner Independent Pictures division, which had co-produced Slumdog along with Pathé, Celador Films, and Film4, to focus on more mass-appeal movies such as The Dark Knight. Of all the movies on Warner Independent Pictures’ 2008 slate, it is thought that Slumdog was the only one that had its distribution rights sold to a third party.
Danny Boyle, the director – who was told that the film was going to go straight to DVD in the US – made sure to reference Warner Bros in his acceptance speech for the Best Director award. “I’ve got to thank everybody at Warner Bros for having the great grace to pass the film on to the extraordinary guy at Fox Searchlight, Peter Rice, and all his team,” he said.
Back in London, Peter Carlton, the senior commissioning executive at Film 4, gleefully remembered showing a director’s cut of the film to Warner Bros last June. “It was like showing it to a brick wall,” he said. “They told us afterwards they were thinking of sticking it out on DVD.”
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Im not surprised, a lot of amazing foreign films go straight to DVD in the US. I just watched RocknRolla which is a typical Guy Ritche (bullets, brits and babes) film but sadly it went straight to DVD in the states. Not nearly as good as Slumdog but still a good film that will sadly be missed out on by most people. Still, Im glad Slumdog got to be appreciated by the masses :)
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And some of the dumbest movies actually make it to the theaters, why do they do this to us don't we deserve quality?
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I'm not surprised that they hedged their bets. Movies like "City of God" (Brazil) or "Tsotsi" (South Africa) that are both fantastic and have quite similar plots compared with "Slumdog" didn't fare too well in US theaters.
It's up to Americans to start seeking out foreign movies more often instead of just watching what is served to them by Hollywood. I wouldn't blame the distributors.
Maybe it could also help if the movies would get dubbed by English speaking actors (like in most other countries), so there wouldn't be a need for subtitles. I think that's another big reason why foreign movies are considered "uncool" by most people.
