12/12/2012 - After the Millennium trilogy filmed in Sweden, the Swedish production outfit will shoot three crime novels by US best-selling author Karin Slaughter in Atlanta, Georgia

Swedish outfit Yellow Bird Production, which brought Swedish author Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy to the screen, has acquired the rights for US best-selling author Karin Slaughter's Will Trent series, which will feed three television films to shoot on locations in Atlanta, Georgia, where the novels take place.

Will Trent – a dyslexic detective at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation with an unusual clearance rate of 89% - and his partner Faith Mitchell work for a new unit, the Special Criminal Apprehension Team headed by Amanda Wagner. Their investigations in Triptych, Fractured and Undone have contributed strongly to Slaughter's worldwide sales of more than 17 million books.

The author will write the first script based on Triptych – Trent is on the trail of a serial rapist with a gruesome inclination - and act as executive producer with Yellow Bird's Ole Søndberg and Anni Faurbye Fernandez, working closely with producers Berna Levin and Marianne Gray. Financing for the project has been arranged outside Europe.

In another move Faurbye Fernandez – who is currently executive producer - has been appointed chief executive officer of the Swedish outfit, to succeed Mikael Wallen, who will step down as president after five years: "It has been an amazing experience, particularly with the global roll-out of the Millennium trilogy," he said. Faurbye Fernandez will take up her new position on January 1.

Owned by Zodiak Media, which is headquartered in Paris and operates 45 companies in 20 countries, Yellow Bird was instigated in 2003. Besides Millennium it has produced, among others, the Swedish and the British Wallander series – the latter starring Kenneth Branagh – and recently Norwegian director Morten Tyldum's 2011 blockbuster, Headhunters [+see also:
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