PRODUCTION Germany
Filmfeld and Aries adapt Schenkel’s third detective novel
by Bénédicte Prot
13/07/2010 - Hamburg-based companies Filmfeld and Aries Images are broadening their horizons and embarking on the film adaptation of Andrea Maria Schenkel’s third novel, Bunker, which was published this year by Nautilus.
Schenkel has enjoyed phenomenal success since her first novels, The Murder Farm (2006, original title: Tannöd), based on the Hinterkaifeck massacre, and Ice Cold (2007, original title: Kalteis), which soon claimed first and second place in the best-seller rankings, respectively.
The Murder Farm became the best-seller of 2007, selling over 300,000 copies. Schenkel’s impressive work was also awarded the 2007 Friedrich Glauser Prize for Best Debut Novel and the German Detective Novel Award in 2007 and 2008. The Murder Farm was then adapted for the stage before being brought to the big screen by director Bettina Oberli (in a film starring Julia Jentsch and Monica Bleibtreu).
This success augurs well for the exciting film project Bunker. Schenkel’s book, her first not to be inspired by real-life events, is an intense thriller in which a young woman is attacked and held captive in the middle of a forest. She engages in a tense and sophisticated psychological duel with her torturer, to the point where he almost becomes the victim.
Josef Wutz, who is co-producing alongside Melanie Hamdorff and Kai Hager, will be in charge of getting the screenplay developed and finding other partners. Shooting is expected to take place between late summer-autumn 2011 in Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony, but the director, DoP and cast are still to be found.
(Translated from French)
