Oscar-Winning Smash Slumdog Millionaire May Be Headed to the Stage

Slumdog Millionaire, the British film that was just named Best Picture at Sunday’s Academy Awards, could be headed to the stage. Several of the creators of the surprise Hollywood hit are in talks to adapt the film into a stage musical, featuring the Oscar-winning music of A.R. Rahman, who made his Broadway debut as composer of Bombay Dreams.

Simon Beaufoy, who won one of Slumdog Millionaire’s eight Oscars for the film’s screenplay, told The New York Times’ Carpetbagger blog of his hopes of bringing the property to the stage back in December. “My dream is A.R. Rahman, who did the score, would write loads of fantastic songs,” he said. “I would do the book for the musical and Danny would direct it. That’s my dream. It begs to be a musical.”

Now that the film has swept the Oscars, talk has resurfaced of a stage translation, with Rahman, who won Oscars for Best Score and Best Song for the closing-credit dance number “Jai Ho”, said to be ready to flesh out the score with additional songs.

Slumdog Millionaire tells the story of Jamal Malik, a penniless teenage orphan from the slums of Mumbai who is one question away from winning a staggering 20 million rupees on India's Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? But when the show breaks for the night, suddenly, he is arrested on suspicion of cheating. Determined to get to the bottom of Jamal’s story, a jaded police inspector spends the night probing Jamal’s incredible past, from his riveting tales of the slums where he and his brother Salim survived by their wits to his hair-raising encounters with local gangs to his heartbreak over Latika, the unforgettable girl he loved and lost. But one question remains a mystery: what is this young man with no apparent desire for riches really doing on the game show? When the new day dawns and Jamal returns to answer the final question, sixty million viewers are about to find out.

Rahman, one of India’s most successful composers known for his Bollywood hits, brought his hit London musical Bombay Dreams to the Broadway Theatre in 2004. Although it featured a Slumdog-type story of a young boy growing up on the streets of India and lavish production numbers, the show as a critical disappointment and closed after 284 performances. With Finnish folk music band Värttinä, he also composed the score to the lavish stage version of The Lord of the Rings, which played in Toronto and London.

There is no further information at this time on when and where Slumdog Millionaire will take to the stage.