22/02/2016 - With Easy Money and Ibiza: The White Island already in development, Swedish major Svensk Filmindustri is also starting work on Babak Najafi’s The Horizon Line

Swedish major Svensk Filmindustri (SF) has signed up Swedish director Babak Najafi (2011's Easy Money 2 [+see also:
trailer
film profile]) to direct The Horizon Line, a thriller scripted by US screenwriters Josh Campbell and Matt Stuecken, who most recently wrote 10 Cloverfield Lane for US director Dan Trachtenberg and producer JJ Abrams (which will be world-premiered on 16 March).

The Horizon Line is one of the first features to be included in Svensk’s new global strategy to produce more English-language thrillers with high-level Scandinavian talent. Currently, there are already two projects in development with France’s StudioCanal: an English-language remake of Daniel Espinosa’s Easy Money [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2010) and Jens Jonsson’s Ibiza: The White Island.

Najafi, whose feature debut, Sebbe [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (2010), won Best First Feature at the Berlin International Film Festival, most recently directed London Has Fallen, the British thriller-actioner starring Gerard Butler and Morgan Freeman, which Focus Features will release next month. The Horizon Line is a suspense-thriller, following a couple on a small aeroplane that loses its way over the Pacific Ocean. It will go into production in the autumn, produced by Fredrik Wikström Nicastro, with Svensk CEO Jonas Fors serving as executive producer. 

“I am really looking forward to working with my friend Wikström Nicastro again and making an international movie for Svensk,” said Najafi. Campbell and Stuecken also supplied the script for Wikström Nicastro's 2010 box-office hit Easy Money, starring Joel Kinnaman. “The Horizon Line is one of the most suspenseful, original scripts I have ever read,” Wikström Nicastro added.

In another move, Svensk has appointed Australian producer Tim King executive vice-president of production Sweden; King’s career includes eight years with McKinsey & Co in Sydney and Stockholm, and five years with a development project in Tanzania for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Most recently, he was VP of operations for Polygon.

Svensk has also named Danish producer Lars Bredo Rahbek head of production Denmark; since 1997, he has been a producer with Nimbus Film and has for the past few years worked with SF’s Danish distribution team. “I look forward to joining the production to pursue SF’s ambitions for a strong and visible European presence,” he explained.