25/04/2013 - After his first US feature Safe House grossed $208 million worldwide, Swedish director Daniel Espinosa has been signed to take Stalin murder mystery to the screen

Swedish director Daniel Espinosa (photo) - whose career took off after his third feature Easy Money [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2010), which reached 601,000 admissions domestically – will direct Child 44 [+see also:
trailer
film profile], from US author Tom Rob Smith’s novel, originally a project for US director-producer Ridley Scott, who will now produce for Lionsgate.

Espinosa, who has also become an internationally bankable filmmaker – his first US feature, Safe House (2012), with Denzel Washington, Ryan Reynolds and Vera Farmiga, grossed $209 million worldwide – will bring two Swedish actors to the cast: Joel Kinnaman, who was in both Easy Money and Safe House, and Noomi Rapace (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo-The Millennium Trilogy [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Niels Arden Oplev
interview: Søren Stærmose
film profile] (2009)).

They will perform with UK actors Tom Hardy and Gary Oldman – they were in The Dark Knight Rises [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2012) together - in the Stalin murder mystery from the first book in Smith’s trilogy (including The Secret Speech, Agent 6), which has been adapted by US Oscar-nominated writer Richard Price (The Color of Money (1986)). The project is in pre-production, but will shoot and be completed during the year.

Child 44 is inspired by the life of Ukranian real-life serial killer, Andrei Chikatilo, aka the Rostov Ripper, whose murderous spree was only possible because the Soviet Union’s institutional policy denied the existence of crime (he was eventually executed for 52 killings in 1994). Leo Demidov, a security officer otherwise defending the system, is investigating the case, but finds himself demoted and exiled with only his wife on his side.