05/05/2014 - State production funding has been secured for Joachim Trier’s Louder than Bombs and Rasmus A Sivertsen’s The Forest of Huckybucky

The Norwegian Film Institute has chipped in €3.5 million of production funding for two new features: Norwegian directors Joachim Trier’s Louder than Bombs [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Joachim Trier
film profile] (€1.6 million) and Rasmus A Sivertsen’s fully animated The Forest of Huckybucky (€1.9 million). Trier will shoot from September, while Sivertsen’s production is scheduled to start next summer.

Louder than Bombs has already received the money once, but since Norwegian production outfit Motlys had to postpone the project indefinitely last year because it had failed to provide the full financing, the state funding needed to be re-confirmed. Now, however, the film is back on track.

With French-German TV network Arte’s cinema division as co-producer, the €7.5 million production will go before the cameras in New York next September, produced by Thomas Robsahm and Josh Astrachan, and with Sigve Endresen executive-producing for Motlys. As originally planned, French actress Isabelle Huppert and Irish actor Gabriel Byrne will still be playing the leads. 

Trier and Eskil Vogt scripted the story of a famous war photographer who is killed in a car accident, leaving behind her husband and two sons. She made a huge impact on their lives, but did any of them really know her, and what are they hiding from each other?

The Forest of Huckybucky will become the first big-screen adaptation of award-winning Norwegian author, playwright, songwriter and illustrator Thorbjørn Egner’s classic animal tale, which was published in 1953, and it will be produced by Ove Heiborg for Norway’s Qvisten Animasjon. The Oslo studio has been involved in ten features and over 400 films, TV series, music videos and commercials over the last 20 years. 

Directed by Qvisten co-owner Rasmus A Sivertsen, one of Norway’s most experienced animation directors (The Christmas of Solan and Ludvig [+see also:
trailer
interview: Rasmus A. Sivertsen
film profile] last year took 822,470 admissions in Norway; he also directed Kurt Turns Evil [+see also:
trailer
film profile] and is currently filming Knutsen & Ludvigson), the film has been scripted by Karsten Fullu, who has worked with him on several titles, most recently The Christmas of Solan and Ludvig.