Slumdog: Trailblazer or one off?

By Clare Walmsley Entertainment reporter, BBC News

On the face of it, Slumdog Millionaire was an unlikely best picture winner for the often-conservative Academy voters.

It is set in India, it is frequently subtitled from Hindi and it was not made by a Hollywood studio.

Slumdog counters graphic scenes and child abuse with a romantic plot

It was almost a straight to DVD movie after the company releasing it was closed down. And on Oscar night it became the first fully British-funded film to win best picture since 1949.

So what is behind its phenomenal success - and is it breaking new ground in the film world?

Empire magazine's features editor Dan Jolin thinks not.

"A lot of people are down about the recession, the time was right for a film to come along and tell a rags-to-riches story," he says.

"Sure it had dark edges to it but at its heart it's a very feel-good, fairytale film.

"The film it was primarily up against, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, was a film about death whereas Slumdog Millionaire was a film about getting the girl and several million rupees."

New breed

The UK Film Council's Simon Till agrees that the film chimed with the mood of the times, particularly in an optimistic post-Obama America. But he thinks the film's success is the result of a new breed in the British industry.

"There's a generation of producers and writers that understand that films cost millions of pounds and so to be marketed they will need to be commercial and work on a worldwide basis," he explains.

"I think there's a real competitive commercialism that they have and they're less intimidated by Hollywood than they were 15 years ago."

I think there's something Disney-esque in its central conceit Dan Jolin, Empire magazine

Slumdog Millionaire's writer Simon Beaufoy said the film demonstrates "there are more important things than money". But its success - it cost