ReelzChannel sat down recently with Danny Boyle to talk about Slumdog Millionaire, which is gaining buzz as an Oscar contender. The movie is inspired by Q & A: A Novel, the first book by Indian diplomat Vikas Swarup.

ReelzChannel: How do you feel about this movie being so well received?

Boyle: So far it's fantastic. It's amazing. I always think I'm a bit of a traditionalist, really. It hasn't really made any money yet. It hasn't played in any theaters yet. But the response has been tremendous. A few weeks ago, we were kind of dead in the water, really. We didn't have a North American distributor and it looked like it would only play in Europe. But it's an incredible transformation in its fortunes. It's sort of a bit like the story in the film really -- the film and this guy apparently [have] no prospects and then they get turned around and suddenly fortune beckons.

RC: So you're going through the journey?

Boyle: Yeah, and it feels like that and it doesn't come as a surprise, actually, 'cause a lot of things -- while we've been making the film -- a lot of things have happened like that. People would say to you, "That's India, that's absolutely the India experience. Trust it. Things will come your way eventually if you have the right story for it."

RC: What do you think people are responding to?

Boyle: In watching the movie, I think it's the underdog [element]. Obviously, it's a very vibrant portrait of a city. I'm very proud of the fact that we did manage to capture some of the sense of the city. But people don't go to the movie to watch that. They go to watch characters and narratives. I think it's the fact that he's an underdog. It's a classic story, isn't it? That a kid who has nothing, apparently no prospects, appears to be unqualified. He has a dream and he can follow that dream. It's very connected with this country, especially. That's obviously deep in [Americans'] psyche -- that sense that you can get there if you believe you can get there. Brits, the cynical old Brits, we don't really have that. If you did get there, we'd cut you down. It's all a bit more cynical, really. We don't quite have that. But it's lovely to see that working. I think that is a big important thing in [the movie].

RC: What did it take to make this independent movie feel bigger in scale?

Boyle: Even if we don't take huge amounts of money, I want the films to keep their freedom -- [that] I can make whatever decisions I want to make. So that's about six or seven million pounds, at the maximum, that I can raise and keep that kind of freedom. But having said that, I want it to feel like it's a $100-million movie. That's always what I say to people at the beginning. That's what I set out to do, and I'll do anything to try to make it feel like a bigger movie. I like big movies; I just don't want to make them with big budgets. But I like them [to feel] like a big, expensive epic movie. A lot of the "epic" comes for free, of course, because Mumbai is an epic city.... So that was a big help, for sure.

RC: What was your initial inspiration?

Boyle: In this, it was the script. It's very much an extraordinary script by Simon Beaufoy -- based on his book but very, very loosely based on his book. The initial idea of a kid who goes on the show and wins it, a slum kid going on the show and winning it, is there in the book. Otherwise, [Beaufoy]'s virtually changed every other detail. It just had a tremendous vibrancy and energy to the story, and I guess that really caught me. Then I read this other book, Maximum City -- that's the expression everybody uses about Mumbai. That book's about a guy who grew up there until he was 16 and then he went to New York, and he got educated at Columbia, and then he moved back when he was 30 with a young family to Mumbai, and tried to settle back in again. That book also inspired me -- I'd have that with me the whole time I was there.

RC: What do you want people to come away with after seeing this?

Boyle: When I arrived [in Mumbai] they said to me, "This place is a billion beating hearts. Make sure you represent them all, don't leave anybody out." I mean, "Include them all"? What does that mean? But now having made [the movie], I know exactly what they mean and I hope people get a sense of that.... It's that heart that I'm really interested that people take away from the movie.