14/09/2009

Swedish production house Yellow Bird hopes to repeat its current success with the Millennium trilogy, with a new series of crime novels written by Sweden’s Liza Marklund, featuring criminal reporter Annika Bengtzon.

Since the 1997 publication of her first novel, The Bomber (adapted for the screen by Colin Nutley), Marklund has been established as a best-selling novelist. Her eight Bengtzon books have sold over nine million copies worldwide and have been translated into 30 languages. Yellow Bird has purchased rights to six of her books: Studio 69, Prime Time, The Red Wolf, Nobel’s Last Will, Lifetime and Marklund’s latest, A Place in the Sun.

“After Colin Nutley’s movies The Bomber and Paradise, with which I was very pleased, I have turned down a lot of offers to adapt my books into films. But when I met with Yellow Bird it felt completely right,” said Marklund.

Just like with the Millennium trilogy, the total production budget for the series will be around SEK 100m (just under €10m). The names for the main cast, writer and director of the series have not been revealed yet, but filming is expected to start in late 2010.

The deal with Marklund was announced a week ahead of the theatrical Scandinavian release of the second instalment of the Millennium trilogy, The Girl Who Played with Fire [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], on September 18. The film once again stars Noomi Rapace and Michael Nyqvist and is directed by Sweden’s Thomas Alfredson.

The first Millennium adaptation, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Niels Arden Oplev
interview: Søren Stærmose
film profile], has sold over six million tickets worldwide so far. It will open in Germany (NFP) on October 1.