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DISTRIBUTION Scandinavia

First Millennium adaptation sells to BIM in Italy

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The Swedish-language film and television adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s best-selling trilogy Millennium has been sold to Italy’s BIM Distribuzione and is in negotiations with several other territories, including France, according to sales agent Zodiak International.

Danish filmmaker Niels Arden Oplev’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, a 150-minute film based on the first book, was offered for the first time to international buyers at the Cannes TV market MIPCOM last week, along with six television film versions.

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Oplev’s film is now in post-production and will open in Sweden, Denmark and Norway at the end of February/early March 2009, while shooting on adaptations from the second and third books, The Girl Who Played with Fire and Castles in the Sky (working title), by director Daniel Alfredson (Wolf) will end in January.

Produced by the Swedish production house Yellow Bird in co-production with Nordisk Film (which holds Scandinavian rights), and European broadcasters SVT (Sweden), DR (Denmark), and ZDF (Germany), the Millennium series is a safe commercial bet. It already has millions of book fans from 35 territories who want to see onscreen the story of detective Mikael Blomkvist (Swedish star Mikael Nyqvist) and IT hacker Lisbeth Salander (Swedish newcomer Noomi Rapace).

In spite of the trilogy’s phenomenal international success (one in three Swedes have read them, while two million and 1.5 million copies have sold in France and the UK, respectively), only the first book will make it to cinemas. “The decision was taken together with SVT a long time ago, before the books were successful. We tried to negotiate to have the possibility of making more feature films, but without success,” explained Yellow Bird’s Managing Director Mikael Wallen.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo will be launched at a major film festival in 2009 and Yellow Bird has already been approached by a US major for remake rights. “Nothing is decided yet but we will most likely want to be involved as co-producers,” said Wallen.

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