03/12/2012 - "His work is perfect to adapt for the big screen," said Icelandic producer Gudrún Udda Thorhannesdóttir of Jón Kalman Stefansson’s award-winning epic

The award-winning trilogy Heaven and Hell by Icelandic author Jón Kalman Stefansson (photo) about the life of an Icelandic fisherman's son at the turn of the 19th century will be adapted for the cinema as an Icelandic-Swedish co-production.

Spellbound Productions - Icelandic producer Gudrún Udda Thorhannesdóttir and her partner, Oscar-nominated director Fridrik Thór Fridriksson's Icelandic production outfit – has joined forces with Sweden's Cap Horn Film, headed by former Swedish public broadcaster drama chief Gunnar Carlsson, who will shortly name a Swedish scriptwriter and Icelandic director for the film, which will shoot in Iceland for a late-2014 delivery.

Reykjavik-based Stefansson was awarded the Swedish PO Enquist Award for part one of his trilogy, Heaven and Hell (2007), the Italian Grinzane Bottari Prize for the second, The Sorrow of Engels (2009) while the concluding installment, The Heart of Man, was published last year. "His writing is poetic and dramatic, with beautiful cinematic descriptions – his work is perfect to adapt for the big screen," explained Thorhannesdóttir. "In many ways it conveys the soul of the Icelanders," Carlsson added.

Spellbound Productions most recently produced Fridriksson’s latest film, Mamma Gógó [+see also:
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