Another Slumdog Millionaire in the making as ‘Million Dollar Arm’ premiers in UK

Based on the lives of Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel from Uttar Pradesh, ‘Million Dollar Arm’ was premiered at the London Indian Film Festival in U.K. before opening for the audience next month. The film distributed by Disney, shows how the lives of two Indian men transform after they are found by a down on luck sports agent who eyes the Indian men as fast paced Baseball pitchers owing to their cricket obsession. The film is directed by Craig Gillespie and has A.R. Rahman as the music composer.

In an event involving all the premiere faces, the producer of the movie Mark Ciardi said "This was one of those movies where everything fit like a glove. We had a tiny month to shoot this in India just before the monsoon and everything just seemed to work. There was no shortage of talent there." The film has Life of Pi star Suraj Sharma playing Rinku and Slumdog Millionaire actor Madhur Mittal playing Dinesh while the ‘Mad Men’ star Jon Hamm plays the sports agent JB Bernstein.

Very excited on an opportunity like this, actor Madhur Mittal said "I finished the script and loved it and then looked back to the title page and went, `Wait a minute. This is true?` I am a huge baseball fan and somehow this flew under my radar, I had a huge responsibility on my shoulders and the one person I really wanted to impress was the real Dinesh. I had never thrown a baseball in my life and had to hit the gym for this role. I have tried my best and my reward was when Dinesh came up to me hugged me after a screening in the US."

‘Million Dollar Arm’ has a lot of heart and focuses on the lives of the two Indians and their bond rather than just sports. Director Craig Gillespie was very happy and went back to the making of the movie saying "We saw JB at a Super Bowl party right before he left for India and I remember him saying he was going there to do a reality show. It sounded crazy, but two years later he had gotten two kids signed and he came to us with this story. It was a really compelling and heart-warming story that truly resonated with us. The idea that this guy goes to India with the sole intention to find an athlete to bring back and get signed to Major League Baseball, and at first they're just an investment but it turns into a real family relationship, that's the emotional core and through-line that appealed to us." As mentioned, the film will be distributed by Disney and will release on August 29. It will be available on DVDs in India.