18/01/2012

Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur became the first film-maker from the volcano island to top the US charts, after his action drama Contraband, starring Mark Wahlberg, Kate Beckinsale and Giovanni Ribisi, became the biggest American opener ever for studio Working Title. By Monday (January 16) it had grossed €22.4 million, in 2,863 theatres.

Contraband is a remake of Icelandic director Óskar Jónasson’s award-winning thriller Reykjavik Rotterdam [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2008), starring Kormákur, whose Blueeyes Productions made the film. While readying The Deep, which he filmed in Iceland 2010, for release later this year, he is preparing to helm another US action drama with Wahlberg in the lead, 2 Guns. He will also produce fellow countryman Dagur Kári’s Rocket Man.

More Icelandic thrills to come: Óskar Thór Axelsson’s feature debut, Black's Game [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (pictured), a tale of the 1990s Icelandic drug and ultra-violent underworld, has been selected for the Tiger Award competition for first and second time directors at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, which unspools its 41st edition between January 25-February 5.

Staged by Thor S Sigurjonsson and Skuli Fr Malmquist for Zik Zak Filmworks and Arnar Knutsson for Filmus, Black's Game starring Thor Kristjansson and Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson was executive produced by Danish director-producer Nicolas Winding Refn, of Drive (2011) fame, who saw in the film ”a true freshness that kindled my interest in the gangster genre in the first place”.

A recent graduate from Tisch School of the Arts in New York, Axelsson also scripted the film, which was presented as a work-in-progress at the recent Stockholm International Film Festival. Launched at Rotterdam’s CineMart by Denmark’s TrustNordisk, it has been licensed to Entertainment One (for the UK) and Frenetic Films (for Switzerland) before its world premiere.