21/05/2007

Danish production powerhouse Zentropa has teamed up with Regner Grasten Film, the creators of family hit Anja & Viktor, to give birth to Filmfabrikken (lit. “The Film Industry”), or what both companies have nicknamed the Danish Miramax.

Announced yesterday in Cannes, the deal includes the production of four low budget films (approximately €1m) and two bigger projects per year, all appealing to wider audiences. “Danish films need a serious injection of energy. We have been resting too long on the laurels of Dogma, which is now more than ten years old. Things are boiling and bubbling here, and Filmfabrikken wants to throw more coal on it to let it all explode”, said producers Regner Grasten and the head of Zentropa Peter Aalbæk Jensen.

The new production centre based at Zentropa’s headquarters in Filmbyen (outside of Copenhagen) aims to put films and audiences directly at the heart of its new strategy, and not think in terms of targets groups. No film will be produced unless it will have the potential to reach at least 100,000 cinemagoers, and Filmfabrikken will make sure all the right marketing is in place to create a strong level of awareness.

As part of its stronger focus on marketing, Filmfabrikken will before year’s end become “a universe with an active website, net-TV and a monthly magazine on independent production throughout Europe. We hope that all film lovers in Europe will create films for a wide audience in an unconventional way,” continued both partners.

For them, US independents (including Miramax) have shown the way, with films such as Rocky, Saturday Night Fever, Pulp Fiction, The Blair Witch Project, and Borat.

“These films have shown that if a good project is there, and its cost is only half a million, this is not what will prevent it from becoming the biggest success of the last 20 years. The secret is to tell the audience that the film is there,” they concluded.