Deepa Mehta’s booking at the Toronto International Film Festival for Midnight’s Children has been down-graded to a Canadian premiere after news Thursday that the Salman Rushdie page-to-screen adaptation will have its world premiere at Telluride.

“It was at the Tokyo Film Festival that the brilliant Australian film director Paul Cox pointed to a small red pin on the lapel of his jacket and said, ‘It’s from the Telluride Film Festival.  Try and get in there,” Mehta said in a statement on news of her Telluride booking.

“It’s taken 15 years and here we are.  Finally,” she added.

Other Toronto titles first making stops in Telluride include Sarah Polley’s Stories We Tell, which first bows in Venice, and Roger Michell’s Hyde Park on Hudson and Nikolaj Arcel’s A Royal Affair, which like Midnight’s Children are now booked into Roy Thomson Hall now for “gala presentations.”

Each is taking a well-trod path as Telluride routinely picks films headed to Toronto.

And titles like The King’s Speech, Slumdog Millionaire, Juno and Brokeback Mountain had “special screenings” in Telluride before building audience and media buzz in Toronto on their way to eventual Oscar glory.