LOS ANGELES, May 22 – In its first survey of South Asian star power in the company’s 20 year history, The Ulmer Scale announced today that Dev Patel, star of the Oscarwinning feature Slumdog Millionaire, tops its list of South Asia’s most bankable stars worldwide, as published in the company’s just-released Actors Hot List.

Nineteen-year-old Patel, who made his movie debut in Danny Boyle’s hit film, scored 30 out of a possible 100 points in studio-level, high-budget movies, with a rank of 245 out of a total pool of 1,402 actors worldwide in the Los Angeles database company’s 2009-10 survey of film industry professionals worldwide.

Second on the list was the American actor-turned-politico Kal Penn, best known as the star of the “Harold and Kumar” slacker comedies and who is of Guajarati Indian descent, with a score of 25. Another Slumdog newcomer, Freida Pinto, earned the South Asian Hot List’s no. 3 with a tally of 18 bankability points. And screen beauty Aishwarya Rai, hailed by the Indian press as one of the world’s most beautiful women, assumed the number 7 spot with a score of 10.

“Both Patel and Pinto showed impressive scores for complete newcomers to feature films, proving that Bollywood and Indian actors are no longer slum dogs in Hollywood,” said Ulmer, who began measuring bankability in 1997 as international editor of The Hollywood Reporter. “Their scores may seem low compared with Hollywood’s A-list talent, which only shows how under utilized India’s and Bollywood’s film talent has been in Hollywood. But that’s all changing now, and I expect these actors to rise rapidly in future surveys as they movie into more high-budget, English-language productions with global appeal.” The Ulmer Scale’s Actors Hot List pegs Will Smith, with a score of 96 in high-budget features, as the world’s most bankable actor, followed by Johnny Depp with 95 points. The Ulmer Scale also ranks the world’s top black, female, Hispanic and Asian talent.

Here is the complete list of The Ulmer Scale’s Top 10 South Asian stars:
1. Dev Patel 30
2. Kal Penn 25
3. Freida Pinto 18
4. Naveen Andrews 15
5. Anil Kapoor 12
6. Om Puri 11
7. Aishwarya Rai 10
8. Shabana Azmi 9
9. Sendhil Ramamurthy 8
10. Sarita Choudhury 6

Overall, Ulmer said that Hollywood talent had suffered the biggest drop in bankable value that he had seen in the 20 years he has been measuring star power. “In nearly every market sector, Hollywood’s blue chip star stock has fallen,” noted Ulmer. “The ability of a star’s name alone to raise money to make a movie – his bankability or ‘star power’ -- has significantly weakened since we last measured it in 2007. It’s a real recession out there.” Ulmer attributed the decline to a plethora of entertainment platforms for the consumer due to a rapidly fragmenting entertainment marketplace. “Stars’ scores have shrunk because they must increasingly compete for eyeballs with all kinds of screens beyond the silver one,” Ulmer added, “and most of those are shrinking too -- TV, the Internet, iPhones, even wristwatches.”

Ulmer is the former international editor of The Hollywood Reporter and is a contributing writer for The New York Times. The Actors Hot List measures the power surges and power drops of more than 1,400 stars worldwide. The complete 472-page book is on sale at www.ulmerscale.com.