Slumdog Millionaire favourite to win top Oscar prize

Washington (ANI): Slumdog Millionaire is most likely to win the best film award at the Oscars, according to a people's choice poll. The film, tracing the story of a poor boy winning a fortune in a reality show, has already won seven BAFTAS and four Golden Globes, and is the favourite to claim the top prize at the Academy awards.

And a poll carried out for HMV's film and music social networking site getcloser.com, suggests that Slumdog Millionaire would win the prize if the decision would lie in the hands of the viewers. A big 59 per cent of voters said that the film based in Mumbai was their favourite to win best picture, followed by The Curious Case of Benjamin Button with 22 per cent votes.

Danny Boyle could bag the best director award at the Oscars, with 59 per cent of the participants so suggesting. And, as far as acting is concerned, Mickey Rourke and Kate Winslet are said to be most people's favourite to win the top prizes. The viewers chose Taraji P Henson and the late Heath Ledger for the supporting awards.

"This poll of film fans on getcloser.com suggests that Slumdog Millionaire has a great chance of building on its BAFTA success by also prevailing in the key best picture and directing Oscar categories - although it's likely to face a much stronger challenge from The Curious Case of Benjamin Button this time around," Contactmusic quoted Matt Potter, content manager for getcloser.com, as saying.

He added: "The one thing I feel we can all say with a much greater degree of certainty, however, is that a posthumous Oscar will be awarded to Heath Ledger for his memorably manic portrayal of The Joker in The Dark Knight."