THE DEADBOLT: You've definitely captured something about India that English-language filmmakers haven't before.

BOYLE: It's gonna be - I was there for eight months and Will Smith made two visits. Not shooting but business deals. And Spielberg and the DreamWorks team, it's beginning to happen.

THE DEADBOLT: Had you been there before?

BOYLE: Before I started this? No. My dad had been there in the war. He'd been actually training for about 14 months for Japan. He was in Bombay when the bomb dropped. He has a very different perspective than a lot of people because he knew then that he wasn't going to die. They all thought they would die sweeping through Japan. They knew after the bomb that they would go home. So, my youth was filled with a lot of talking about India. There was a lot of racist television in the '70s in England where Indians are the butt of the joke. And he you used to say, "That's not true at all. People there aren't like that at all." He was really annoyed by it. Those kind of things stick in your mind.

THE DEADBOLT: The hippie in me is fascinated by the idea that because your dad was stationed in Bombay during the war it affected the way that you made a movie coming out in 2008. Wow.

BOYLE: [laughs] I certainly felt a connection to it. It's like when I made The Beach in Thailand... I love Thailand and the people are great, but I didn't feel that connection that I felt with India. They had to drag me away at the end to stop me filming. They had to send me home.

THE DEADBOLT: The affection is there on-screen.

BOYLE: I hope so.

THE DEADBOLT: What do you think of the Dickensian comparisons? It's been brought up a lot. Do you understand that?

BOYLE: Yes, I do. I think it's very accurate, as well. What was lovely was that when people started saying it - I think Simon said it first - as a writer he was more aware of it than anybody. It's because you've got these extremes like you did in Dickens time. It's what drove him to be a great storyteller - Victorian, Industrial Revolution, London, which has this vast, incredible engine of wealth being created on the backs of incredibly poor people who were flocking to the cities.

You had these extraordinary cities that were changing every day with terrible cruelty and incredible opportunity, side by side. That's absolutely Mumbai. We've organized our cities now and our societies, although there's still great poverty, we've taken the edge off suffering and the edge off those extremes. It's health, safety, and political correctness. Just a general softening and comfort zones that we've created around our lives. You don't get that kind of drama any more.

When you do drama, it tends to be about heartache and relationships. We tend to extend our extreme drama into fantasy world - Spider-Man, Batman, Narnia, Lord of the Rings - that's why fantasy has become de rigueur. It's not even challenged as a genre any more. It is THE default setting. It's because we still want drama to be extreme but you look for it in Heath Ledger, in that performance, where you can push things really hard. Mumbai, you can do that and stay realistic. And it is realistic, the film. There's nothing in the film that's an exaggeration of what goes on or what went on. If anything, it's probably not as melodramatic as it should be. My Indian crew said, "If you really want to release to a mainstream Indian audience, you have to be a lot more extreme."

THE DEADBOLT: Do you wonder how they'll respond in India?

BOYLE: They're preparing an Indian translation, a Hindi dub, but it's interesting. Anil, who's been making films there for twenty years, said, "You need to be bigger." For us, it's quite "big", but they need it "bigger".

THE DEADBOLT: I asked you about 28 Months Later a year ago and there wasn't much. Are we still in the same place?

DANNY BOYLE: It's not quite. There IS an idea. A good idea. I can't give you the idea because then someone else would just write it. But there's a very good idea for it that would actually conclude it in a way that would be unexpected, I think.

THE DEADBOLT: But it's definitely gonna happen?

BOYLE: I don't know. You would imagine it's got a very good chance. This idea is quite, unfortunately, complex. It's not a simple idea that you could just go about it in a kind-of guerilla style like we did on the first one. It's not as "contained" as the second one. I would think the budget would be bigger. So whether it will definitely happen or not? I don't know. With sequels, it's all about economics. The studio says, "We figure we can make that back, so yeah."

THE DEADBOLT: Anything else on your plate?

BOYLE: Not really. I just finished with this, really. I do like just doing one thing at a time and not having a slew of work waiting. I haven't done anything. I imagined that I would come on my tour and get my head organized. It's not going to happen. [laughs]

Slumdog Millionaire opens November 12th, in select cities. Don't miss it.