A British film that was snubbed by Hollywood and looked destined for a straight-to-DVD release in America is now the favourite to win the Best Picture Oscar.

After its triumph at the Golden Globes, Slumdog Millionaire has built up such momentum that pundits believe it will be the first film financed entirely in Britain to take the top prize at the Academy Awards since Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet in 1948.

It is an astonishing achievement for an independent film made for a modest $15 million (£10 million) that has no stars – at least none known in the West – no prominent white characters and long stretches of dialogue in Hindi.

The film’s three-year journey from no-hoper to critical darling reached a new peak on Sunday night when it won four Golden Globes, including Best Picture and Best Director for Danny Boyle, the Mancunian best known for Trainspotting. The Globes are seen as one of the best indicators of Oscar success. In 26 of the past 50 years the winner of the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture-Drama has gone on to win at the Oscars.

Along with Kate Winslet, who won Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress Globes (a feat previously achieved only by Sigourney Weaver in 1987) and Sally Hawkins, who won Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical award, Slumdog is part of a sustained British pursuit of the main prizes at the Oscars on February 22. William Hill installed Slumdog Millionaire last night as a 4-11 favourite for Best Picture ahead of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button at 5-1 and Milkat 8-1.

However, right up until its first public screenings at the Telluride and Toronto film festivals late last summer it looked like Slumdogmight sink without trace. Peter Carlton, senior commissioning executive at Film 4, said yesterday: “At various stages along the process everyone around us was saying, ‘Do you think anyone is actually going to watch that?’ ” The initial idea to adapt Q&A, a novel by Vikas Swarup, came from Kate Sinclair, then Film 4’s book scout. Before she had even finished reading the book, which was then unpublished, she pitched it to Tessa Ross, the controller of Film 4, in three sentences: “A street kid from Mumbai wins Who Wants to be A Millionaire? They have him up for fraud, as they don’t believe he could have known the answers. The film is the story of his life and how he knew the answers to those questions.”

Ross brought in Simon Beaufoy, the writer of The Full Monty, who refashioned the novel into a love story, and then signed up Boyle. But finance proved elusive. “The whole of Hollywood passed on it first time around. They all said, ‘Who wants to see misery and street kids?’ ” So Film 4 put up $5 million (“really out on a limb for us”) and Celador, the owners of the rights to Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, found $10 million.

Boyle shot the film on location in Mumbai’s slums using a largely local crew to cut costs. The cast included genuine street kids, one of whom was found sleeping on the roof of a car during filming because his home had been bulldozed.

The winning cast

MOTION PICTURES

Drama Slumdog Millionaire
Musical/comedy Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Actor, drama Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler)
Actress, drama Kate Winslet (Revolutionary Road)
Director Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire)
Actor, musical/comedy Colin Farrell (In Bruges)
Actress, musical/comedy Sally Hawkins (Happy-Go-Lucky)
Supporting actor Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight)
Supporting actress Kate Winslet (The Reader)
Foreign language Waltz With Bashir
Animated Wall-E
Screenplay Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire)
Original score A. R. Rahman (Slumdog Millionaire)
Original song The Wrestler (Bruce Springsteen)

TELEVISION
Series, drama Mad Men
Actor, drama Gabriel Byrne (In Treatment)
Actress, drama Anna Paquin (True Blood)
Series, musical/comedy 30 Rock
Actor, musical/comedy Alec Baldwin (30 Rock)
Actress, musical/comedy Tina Fey (30 Rock)
Miniseries or movie John Adams
Actress, miniseries or movie Laura Linney (John Adams)
Actor, miniseries or movie Paul Giammatti (John Adams)
Cecil B. DeMille Award Steven Spielberg

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