Hollywood producers don’t usually wish that the hype surrounding their latest film would die down. But Christian Colson, the Briton who helped make Slumdog Millionaire, sounds fatigued.

“Peoples’ attention will drift,” he told The Times, hopefully, just hours after stepping off the plane from Los Angeles, where he had accepted the Oscar for Best Picture. “And that can’t happen soon enough.”

Mr Colson’s anxiety stems from the frenzy surrounding Slumdog’s two child stars, Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail, 10, and Rubina Ali Qureshi, 9, who were plucked from an impoverished Mumbai shanty town to play the youngest incarnations of the film’s lead couple.

Since mid-December, when it became apparent that Slumdog was set to take the world by storm, the children’s neighbourhood, a stretch of ramshackle hutments, open sewers and tarpaulin-covered lean-tos in north Mumbai, has been besieged by the global media. This week they returned from Hollywood, where they had attended the Oscars ceremony, to a heroes’ welcome in Mumbai. While Slumdog’s star climbed, however, relations between the film makers and the actors’ parents soured, amid accusations that the families were somehow duped and their children underpaid.

Rafiq Asghar Ali Quereshi, Rubina’s father, told the Times that the money his daughter had earned from the film had initially seemed a large sum. “But having seen its success, now I'm not sure.”

Mr Colson admits that that he and Danny Boyle, the film’s Oscar-winning director, were wrong-footed by the scale of interest in Rubina and Azharuddin. He insists, however, that the children were paid fairly and that from the moment the pair were cast, in October 2007, moves were made to safeguard their future welfare. The children were found places in an NGO-run school – the first they had ever attended – close to their homes that specialises in educating disadvantaged youngsters. If they remain in school until they are 18, they will receive a “significant lump-sum”. There is also a scheme whereby small amounts of cash can be accessed quickly by the families in case of emergency.

In recent weeks, however, Mr Colson admits that the film-makers’

perception of what was in the children’s best interests and the wishes of their parents – who have clamoured for cash up front – have diverged sharply. “We thought that the parents would be incentivised by long-term benefits to their children. We were wrong,” he said.

Slumdog’s plot may turn on the premise of a poor kid receiving a cash windfall of unimaginable proportions, but Mr Colson is adamant that reality will not emulate art. “From the outset it was decided we would not shower the kids with cash or have a transformative impact on their lives,” he said. “That would have been a much easier thing to do.”

Instead, the filmmakers’ have chosen to provide the children with things that have no value to a third party – such as education – a strategy designed to limit risks to their security.

People connected to the film in India say that Mr Colson and Mr Boyle were particularly alarmed at the apparent fecklessness of Azharuddin’s parents. When his family’s home was bulldozed without notice several months ago the filmmakers released cash from the emergency fund. The parents gave it to a man who said he would find them a new home, who has not been seen since. As a result, Azharuddin and his family live under a rickety, tarpaulin-covered structure, not dissimilar to the kind of den a group of small children might build in a middle-class backgarden in the UK.

Mr Colson now admits that he and Mr Boyle have had to re-evaluate their approach. They recently agreed to buy proper, if modest, homes for the two families, which the parents will use but not own, the deeds to which will be transferred to the children at the age of 18.

He is aware of a rival offer by a local politician to award the children flats, but is working under the assumption it will fall through – a development that would surprise few in India.

Separately, next week Mr Colson hopes to announce a £500,000 donation, raised from the film’s takings, to an umbrella group of charities who work with poor children in Mumbai. The gift will be part of a wider effort to “systemise the arrangements” in place for Rubina and Azharuddin, Mr Colson said. He hopes that the charity may also be able to act as an “honest broker”, who will rebuild trust between the filmmakers and the children’s parents.

The wish not to have a “transformative” effect on the children’s lives may prove a pipedream, however, for all the filmmakers’ good intentions. Mr Boyle has admitted that he almost didn't cast slum kids after asking himself "would it distort their lives too much". He went ahead after arguing that the children should not be discriminated against, but the most basic of benefits will mark Rubina and Azharuddin from their slum peers. Few of their friends attend school, for example, let alone are ferried to class everyday in a chauffeur-driven car.

Back in the slum, their playmates are under no illusion that the child actors’ lives have undergone a massive change. “She has achieved a lot and she has gone to the Oscars," said Muskaan, 8, of her friend Rubina. "I don't think she will play with me when she comes back.”

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