12/02/2011

Benelux distributor Lumière has acquired the rights to Camilla Läckberg’s The Fjällbacka Murders, based on original stories specifically written for film and TV by acclaimed scriptwriters supported by the famous Swedish crime novelist. The deal was announced yesterday by sales company TrustNordisk in Berlin.

The two feature films and 10-episode TV series is produced by Easy Money [+see also:
trailer
film profile] creators Tre Vänner for SEK300 million (€34.1m). Producer Helen Åhlsson is currently working closely with Läckberg on the project.

All the crime stories will be told in flashbacks and set in the novelist’s birthplace, the small town of Fjällbacka. The lead character will be Läckberg's alter ego, Erica Falck, a young determined and likable woman married to a police investigator. Filming of the The Fjällbacka Murders will start on August 15, with Marcus Olsson directing the first two TV films. Tre Vänner co-founder Michael Hjorth is executive producer

Camilla Läckberg is one of the most popular Nordic writers of crime fiction and her works have so far been published in more than 33 countries. In Holland, the Nordic literary genre is extremely popular, ever since the first novels by Sjöwall and Wahlöö were published in 1969.

Jan de Clercq, head of Lumiere, started to exploit the lucrative genre in 2006 when he discovered the Wallander TV series produced by Swedish production powerhouse Yellow Bird. He then acquired rights for the Millennium trilogy that sold over 600,000 tickets in Benelux. But DVD is where Nordic crime pays the most, says de Clercq, hence his decision to launch the DVD label Scandinavian Crime Series. “Films based on Nordic books represent around 60-70% of our DVD turnover,” he said.

Recent Nordic crime films and TV series acquired by Lumiere incude Sweden’s Easy Money and Irene Huss and Norway’s Varg Veum films.