Billy Elliot is a 2000 British dance drama film about a boy becoming a professional ballet dancer, set in north-eastern England during the 1984–85 coal miners' strike. It was produced by Greg Brenman and Jon Finn, music composed by Stephen Warbeck, co-produced by BBC Films, Tiger Aspect Pictures and Working Title Films, distributed by Universal Pictures and Focus Features, written by Lee Hall and directed by Stephen Daldry.
The film stars Jamie Bell as 11-year-old Billy, an aspiring dancer dealing with the negative stereotype of the male ballet dancer, Gary Lewis as his coal miner father, Jamie Draven as Billy's bullying older brother, and Julie Walters as his ballet teacher. The film was theatrically released on 29 September 2000 by Universal Pictures and Focus Features. The film received positive reviews from critics and it earned £72,853,509 on a £3 million budget. In 2001, author Melvin Burgess was commissioned to write the novelisation of the film based on Lee Hall's screenplay. The story was adapted for the West End stage as Billy Elliot the Musical in 2005; it opened in Australia in 2007 and on Broadway in 2008.
