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PRODUCTION Norway

Norway’s only tsunami to feed its first major disaster movie

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- Norwegian director Roar Uthaug's The Wave, based on the 1934 catastrophe that killed 40 people, receives €2.2 million Tordenskiold funds from the Norwegian Film Institute

After Norwegian director Morten Tyldum has dropped out of local €10.1 million historical drama Tordenskiold, the Norwegian Film Institute has redirected the €2.2 millionproduction funding originally allocated for the project to Norwegian director Roar Uthaug’s The Wave [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Roar Uthaug
film profile
]
(photo), Norway’s first major disaster movie, which was number two on the support list.

Norwegian producers Martin Sundland and Are Heidenstrøm will package the production for Fantefilm, which also backed Uthaug’s Cold Prey [+see also:
trailer
interview: Roar Uthaug
film profile
]
 (2006) and Escape (2012). The director’s Magic Silver [+see also:
trailer
interview: Roar Uthaug
film profile
]
(2009) exceeded 350,000 admissions domestically.

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“A strong story in a spectacular nature with lots of special effects will give us a new idea of what can happen in a fjord – I am sure this will be a film which will meet broad audiences both in Norway and abroad,” said the institute’s development and production chief Ivar Køhn.

To be scripted by John Kåre Raske, The Wave is based on a real-life event – Norway’s only tsunami in 1934, when a massive landslide dropped two million cubic metres of rock into the Tafiord, triggering a wave more than two hundred feet high, which left 40 people dead. Geologists and the local society at the Storfiord are convinced it will happen again, but next time it will be registered in advance.

The institute also chipped in for four television series, including NRK’s Lilyhammer 2, which will be directed by Simen Alsvik; TV Norge’s Next Summer, also from Alsvik; TV2’s The Third Eye, from Rubicon TV, under the direction of Trygve Allister Diesen; and NRK Super’s The Fight, written and directed by Martin Lund for Ape&Bjørn.

 

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