16/08/2007

Sonet Film, the production and distribution company run since 1984 by Peter Possne is going to change managing director early January and its film strategy.

Under the aegis of the current vice president Mattias Berggren, the company owned by Modern Times Group, will almost totally pull out from the local production sector to re-focus on the distribution of quality foreign films, which is how the company started 23 years ago with landmark titles like Bagdad Café, Delikatessen, or The Big Blue.

Possne gradually reduced the import of foreign films to increase his activities as producer and co-producer of Swedish films, to the point of becoming the leading distributor of local films. During the 1990s and early 2000, Possne was associated with the making of some of the biggest Swedish hits, from Colin Nutley’s House of Angels (1992), all Lukas Moodysson’s films to Kay Pollak’s As It is in Heaven [+see also:
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film profile] (over 1.3 million admissions). But over the last three years, too few local films in which Sonet had invested delivered at the box office, and in 2006, Sonet’s market share dropped by 8.2%, to 2.3% for a 10th position among theatrical distributors. While Possne has asserted he will continue to play a key role in the local production sector where his real passion lies, Sonet will go back on the shopping spree, determined to fill the gap left by Triangel Film. From November, the company will release around 10-15 films per year, a mix of art-house and mainstream films, mostly Asiatic and European films. Meanwhile, the Swedish input will be cut by half, from 6-8 movies per year to 3 or 4.

To have stronger muscles in the international acquisition arena, Sonet has just teamed up with Pan Vision –among the top Nordic home entertainment distributors-, Cinema Mondo in Finland and CCV in Norway to secure distribution rights for the Nordic region. Recent pick ups include the The Orphanage executive produced by Guillermo Del Toro, and Fox and the Child by Luc Jacquet.