Director Danny Boyle with Dev Patel and Freida Pinto at the Oscar party on Sunday. (AP)

Ranchi, Feb. 24: As Slumdog Millionaire rode high on success at the Academy awards, Ranchi went into raptures.

Eylex, the capital’s only multiplex, has decided to organise free screening of the film for schoolchildren to celebrate the victory. The first to cash in on this offer is JP Memorial School. The institute will bring 100 of its students for tomorrow’s morning show at the red screen.

Till the last weekend, the occupancy at the multiplex was 80 per cent, but the Oscar sweep has changed things. Eylex introduced four new shows and slashed the ticket price from Rs 100 to Rs 50 for gold seats. For platinum seats the new price is Rs 70. And the red as well as blue screens today are house full.

Eylex manager Deepak Choudhary said two days ago they brought out an advertisement in the newspapers to arrange for free morning show for schoolchildren and the first response came from JP Memorial School, Tupudana. “We will be screening the Hindi version Slumdog Crorepati for the schoolchildren,” he said.

“The movie is being screened for the last four weeks but after the eight Oscar sweep we thought of increasing the number of shows. We now have four shows instead of the two and we are pleased to see that the movie is running house full, that too on a week days. Today the first two shows registered full occupancy. We also slashed the rate so that more people come in to watch the movie,” said Pradeep Modi, the owner of Eylex.

Even bookstores like Gyan Deep are now running out of stock of Q & A by Vikas Swarup, the book on which the film is based. Earlier Q & A failed to evoke response from book lovers but in its new avatar as Slumdog Millionaire it is flying of the shelves.