There will be no comfort for Tom Cruise from film fans outside America. Lions for Lambs, the first movie studio United Artists has produced under his leadership, was outroared at the worldwide box-office by a Bollywood production, after garnering disappointing results Stateside.

The Robert Redford-directed movie, a dialogue-heavy drama centring on the war in Afghanistan and starring Cruise, Redford and Meryl Streep, took £4.9m from 45 countries. Its relative failure followed negative reviews, especially in the UK and Germany, and a disappointing result at the US box-office.

Lions for Lambs appears to have been trounced by Indian movies Om Shanti Om, a tribute to 1970s Bollywood films, and Saawariya, a three-hour musical based on White Nights, a Fyodor Dostoyevsky short story.

According to Variety, Om Shanti Om took in £8.2m while Saawariya cashed in £6.9m - placing Lions for Lambs at number three. However, Reuters crowns Saawariya as this weeks' winner, with £7.4m in intakes, with Lions for Lambs the runner-up film.

Whoever the precise winner was, the result looks like a rare victory for Bollywood over Hollywood. Despite their high popularity, Indian films seldom reach the upper echelons of the worldwide box-office. However, on this occasion, the Hindu religious holiday of Diwali had local film-goers flocking to cinemas.

Further down the charts, the Ben Stiller comedy The Heartbreak Kid added another £4.1m to its total intakes outside America of £19.8m. One place below found the Pixar animated feature Ratatouille, which cooked up more than £3.8m this week.