11/05/2012 - Swedish award-winning director Daniel Fridell will portray Swedish Reluctant Porn King Berth Milton Jr. in 'The Godfather meets Boogie Nights'

Credited with such local box office successes as Blood Brothers (2005) and Say That You Love Me (2006), which won a Guldbagge, the Swedish national film prize, Swedish director Daniel Fridell (picture) has been signed to helm the $20 million A Private Story, about Swedish porn king Berth Milton Jr.

Instigated by US talent agency William Morris Endeavor, represented by global head of packaging Graham Taylor, A Private Story will be produced by Mirijam Johansson, of Wanted Pictures and Ken Meyer/Jim Steele of Revelin Studios.

At the upcoming Cannes International Film Festiva, Fridell – who described the film as The Godfather meets Boogie Nights – will announce further details of the production which will commence principal photography this summer for a 2013 delivery.

Previously, an Airborne TV-FIVE film, The Reluctant Porn King (2001), depicted the life of how Milton JR, who went from a small Swedish town boy to running his father’s porn business, the Private Media Group, which Nasdaq has valued at $200 million.

When in the early 1990s he took over the company from his father, then an alcoholic with financial problems, he turned it into a blue-movie powerhouse producing such films as Gladiator, the dirty version of the Russell Crowe-starrer.

Milton Jr. was recently (March) ousted by the investors, and responded that he would take his revenge on screen: “A lot of people should be very scared about this movie - famous people, wealthy people, politicians. Even I myself won’t look that good, but I don’t care, it will be the truth."

Fridell’s most recent film, El Médico: The Cubaton Story, a documentary about a Cuban doctor dreaming of being an artist and healing his people through his music, has screened at the Mar De Plata, Busan and Austin film festivals.