A 'Slumdog' Leads The Pack

The Prince Charming in this story is Fox Searchlight, which forked over $2.5 million for the project around the time it made its festival debut. The studio had concerns about the film's commercial viability, but it also had a long history with Boyle (28 Days Later, Millions, and Sunshine) and a visceral response to an early screening. ''You felt you'd seen a revolutionary film,'' says Peter Rice, president of Searchlight, which got plenty of Oscar love for Juno and Little Miss Sunshine, but has never had a Best Picture winner. ''So we sat around and said, 'What shall we do?'''

Fox Searchlight ultimately believed in Slumdog enough to invest an estimated $25 million to market the film and build an Oscar campaign. Before it was released, the studio held 197 special screenings across the country. Now Searchlight is continuing to woo Academy voters with Q&A sessions that capitalize on Boyle and Co.'s guileless appeal. ''They're so grateful and happy and uncynical — just like the movie,'' says Searchlight COO Nancy Utley. ''It makes you feel good to be around it.''

Of course, there have been plenty of scrappy nonstudio films — Brokeback Mountain, for one — that made it into Oscar's final five but wound up as the little indies that...couldn't. This time it may be different. The combination of the movie's love-conquers-poverty plot and indie-conquers-studio backstory has helped Slumdog win the affection and, possibly more importantly, the sympathy of voters. ''Every actor, director, and crew person knows what it's like to place their dream in the hands of a person in a position of power and be turned away,'' says one veteran Oscar campaigner who works for a competing studio. ''It's an industry full of rejection, and everyone feels like they're constantly coming from behind. The Academy loves an underdog story.''

Best Picture Contenders

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Total Nominations: 13
Domestic Box Office to Date: $104 million

Frost/Nixon
Total Nominations: 5
Domestic Box Office to Date: $9 million

Milk
Total Nominations: 8
Domestic Box Office to Date: $21 million

The Reader
Total Nominations: 5
Domestic Box Office to Date: $8 million

Slumdog Millionaire
Total Nominations: 10
Domestic Box Office to Date: $45 million

Source: Box Office Mojo