After the Olsen Jr Gang, Næss finds a new team for film and television

by Jorn Rossing Jensen

25/04/2012 - Norwegian director Arne Lindtner Næss (pictured), who has specialised in films for children and young audiences – he is behind the Olsen Jr Gang franchise, and most recently Magic Silver 2 [trailer] – will now introduce Norwegian author Tor Åge Bringsværd’s Karsten and Petra characters to cinema and television.

The feature and 13x13min television series about the two five-year-olds and their pets which only they can see – not the grown-ups – are among the four TV drama productions that the Norwegian Film Institute has supported by €2.2 million (for budgets totalling €12m).

Shooting back-to-back from this month (April), both the film and the series are scripted by Thomas Bjerke, and produced by Silje Hopland Eik, for Cinenord. SF Norge AS will release the film in February 2013, while Norwegian pubcaster NRK Super will air the TV version in August 2013.

The institute also backed Rubicon TV’s 12-part mockumentary The Watchmen, about a team of dysfunctional watchmen in a shopping centre, written and directed by Lilyhammer’s Anne Bjørnstad, with Henrik Elvestad in the lead. Commercial broadcaster TV2 will transmit the series this winter.

Køber, a drama-thriller in six espisodes from writer-historian Ivo de Figueiredo’s The Mystery of Ingeborg Køber (2010), will be directed by Andreas Riiser. Commercial station TVNorge has programmed the Funkenhauser production for the autumn 2013.

In Trio, a crime series for children and young audiences, 12-year-old Runa and her friends Simen and Lars investigate local mysteries in a little village in the Guldbrandsdalen. Directed by Atle Knudsen, NRK Super has scheduled it for October 2013.