25/03/2005

A. Film, Scandinavia’s largest animation company is working on the screen adaptation of two of the most popular book characters: Hans Christian Andersen’s classic The Ugly Duckling and Asterix and The Vikings based on the comic book of the same name.

A.Films’ free interpretation of H.C. Andersen’s famous tale The Ugly Duckling & Me will be a 3D feature animated film produced for Warner Bros’ German division who bought the rights for Scandinavia, French and German speaking countries. According to producer Anders Mastrup, co-founder of A-Film with animators Stefan Fjeldmark, Karsten Kiilerich, Jorgen Lerdam and Hans Perk, his animation team put Andersen’s fairytale into an untraditional, contemporary and fun movie without loosing their loyalty to Andersen’s values and plot.
The feature film to be delivered in the Autumn 2006, will follow an international TV series in 26 episodes to be screened on Danish TV2 at the end of 2005.

A.Film’s other major feature animation in production is Asterix And The Vikings to be produced for French TV company M6. The project said to be Europe’s most expensive animated feature film to date with a 22 Million € budget, will be directed by A Film’s Stefan Fjeldmark (Help I’m a Fish!) and Jesper Møller, who will co-write the film version of the popular comic book with Belgian Jean-Luc Goossens. The worldwide release of the film is planned for 2006.

A.Film –owned at 50% by Nordic giant Egmont group since 1995-, had a major hit last year with its previous animated film Terkel in Trouble [+see also:
trailer
film profile], the fourth most popular local film in Denmark with over 380,000 admissions.