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PEOPLE Denmark

A Dreyer Award and a US thriller for Oscar-nominated Arcel

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- Danish director Nikolaj Arcel and his script-writer partner Rasmus Heisterberg will adapt US writer Don Winslow's The Power of the Dog for a Hollywood production

Danish director Nikolaj Arcel (photo) and his script-writer partner Rasmus Heisterberg, whose A Royal Affair [+see also:
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is nominated for an Oscar as Best Foreign-Language Feature, have been signed to adapt US writer Don Winslow’s best-selling novel The Power of the Dog.

Arcel-Heisterberg, who are currently living in Los Angeles, where they are writing the screenplays for the thriller franchise from Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen’s novels currently shooting for Denmark’s Zentropa Entertainments and TV2, also penned the first film from Swedish author Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy, The Girl with the Dragon Trattoo [+see also:
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(Men Who Hate Women).

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Last week Arcel flew home to receive Denmark’s Carl Th Dreyer Prize 2012, which is given mainly to younger directors “in recognition of an outstanding artistic effort” – previous recipients include Danish directors Lars von Trier, Thomas Vinterberg and Susanne Bier.

“Go to Hollywood as much as you want, just sell your soul – but come back. Danish film needs your ectoplasmic discharge of energy,” said Danish film historian Peter Schepelern, when he presented the award at Copenhagen’s Film House (January 30).

Arcel and Heisterberg will script The Power of the Dog with US writer-director-producer Shane Salerno, who has collaborated with Winslow – a former private investigator-turned-author – on such films as US director Oliver Stones Savages, and who most recently launched Salinger, a documentary of US author JD Salinger, which he wrote, directed and produced.

Arcel, whose feature credits include King’s Game (2004), will direct the adaption of Winslow’s 2005 novel for Salerno’s The Story Factory; it follows a young agent in the US Drug Enforcement Administration and his 30-year-battle against Mexican drug syndicates.

 
 

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