'Safe House' Actor Fares Fares Joins 'Department Q' Franchise

By Scott Roxborough / The Hollywood Reporter

08-10-2012

 

Lebanese-Swedish actor Fares Fares (Safe House) has joined the cast of The Keeper of Lost Causes, the first in a four-film crime franchise based on the bestselling novels by Jussi Alder-Olsen.

Fares will play police investigator Hafez al Assad. Together with his partner Carl Morck (played by Danish actor Nikolaj Lie Kaas) they reopen a five-year-old murder case, a case that leads them on a pan-Scandinavian man hunt to track down a psychopathic killer.

The Keeper of Lost Causes, which Mikkel Norgaard (The Clown) will direct, is the first of four features based on Adler-Olsen's Department Q novels. Fares and Kaas have signed on to star in all four films in the franchise. Nikolaj Arcel, a screenwriter on the original Swedish The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2009) and director of Denmark's Oscar candidate A Royal Affair, penned the script to The Keeper of Lost Causes.

Louise Vesth, whose credits include The Clown and Lars Von Trier's Melancholia, is producer The Keeper of Lost Causes for Zentropa Entertainments20 in co-production with Zentropa's production subsidiary, Zentropa Entertainments Berlin, Germany's ZDF Enterprises, Danish public broadcaster TV2 and German distributor NFP.

Nordisk Film will bow the film in Scandinavia next Fall. The following three films in the franchise are planned to be released in 2014, 2015 and 2016.

TrustNordisk is handling international sales for the Department Q franchise.