04/07/2013 - Norwegian director Morten Tyldum will direct The Imitation Game and Ghostman, while Swedish director Jesper Ganslandt has been signed for Mission: Blacklist

The success of Norwegian director Morten Tyldum’s Jo Nesbø adaptation, Headhunters [+see also:
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film profile] (2011) – it took 560,000 admissions domestically and won the Audience Amanda, Norway’s national film prize – has paved the way (so far) for two Hollywood assignments for the director, who has dropped out of the Norwegian €10 million Tordenskjold project in favour of the US features. Headhunters was an international sell-out for Denmark’s TrustNordisk.

According to Norway’s BA, Tyldum (photo) is in London to prepare the September shoot of The Imitation Game for Black Bear Pictures and Ampersand Pictures. UK actors Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley will star in writer Graham Moore’s portrait of British mathematician Alan Turing, a cryptanalyst whose expertise cracked Germany’s Enigma code during World War II. Turing was later prosecuted for being a homosexual, chose chemical castration instead prison, then succumbed to depression and committed suicide.

Tyldum will also direct Ghostman,Warner Bros’ adaptation of Roger Hobbs’ 2011 novel about a professional who knows how to clean up messes and make criminals disappear – no problem, until he has to get his former mentor out of a casino heist which went wrong. Produced by Kevin McCormick for Langley Park, it will be scripted by US writer Danny Strong who is in London for meetings with the Norwegian director. Filming is due before Christmas, when principal photography for The Imitation Game has been completed.

Meanwhile Swedish director Jesper Ganslandt, who most recently signed the family drama Blondie (2012), is about to shoot his first international picture, Mission: Blacklist, the story of how US military agent Eric Maddox masterminded the capture of the world’s most wanted man – Saddam Hussein. Produced by Ross M Dinerstein and Kevin Waller for UK’s Embankment Film, scripted by Dylan Kussman from Maddox’s own book, the thrillerwill go before the cameras late summer with Robert Pattinson (The Twilight Saga) in the lead role.