Movie observers believe it the biggest surprises in years, that 18-year-old Dev Patel has been nominated along with Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight), Josh Brolin, (Milk), Robert Downey Jr (Tropic Thunder) and Philip Seymour Hoffman (Doubt) for the Screen Actors Guild awards, in the Best Supporting actor category.
The London critics placed Patel in two categories, Best British Actor of the Year and Young British Performer. He has already been declared Most Promising Performer by the Chicago Film Critics Association.
The announcement, which caught the attention of major newspapers and television channels, came just as Slumdog Millionaire was adding more 331 theatres in North America, taking its total count to 500. The film was at tenth spot on the North American box office chart on Thursday, and is expected to go up a notch or two with the new expansion.
SAG also nominated the film, which has grossed nearly $ 8.8 million in North America and $ 1 million in Italy, for ensemble acting just as the nomination and award count for it kept on piling up. The SAG nominations are crucial because fellow artists choose the best performers, the nominations also boost a film's profile at the Oscar nomination time.
Indeed, not even senior strategists at Fox Searchlight expected their film to show up anywhere today, not because it isn't worthy of all the recognition in the world, but because virtually none of the principal cast has ever been heard of outside of India.
The film will open in United Kingdom and India next month
