A Royal Affair director Nikolaj Arcel is to reunite with star Mads Mikkelsen on period drama King’s Land, on which TrustNordisk has boarded international sales.
The project marks Arcel’s first Danish film for nearly a decade and will be produced by Zentropa, which also made A Royal Affair that sold to 80 countries, won two prizes at the Berlinale in 2012 and went on to be Oscar nominated.
The project was announced today in Cannes and has already pre-sold to Germany (Koch Films), France (The Jokers Films), Benelux (September Films) and Hungary (Vertigo Media). A script is available for international buyers.
King’s Land begins shooting on September 5 and will film in Denmark, Germany and the Czech Republic. It has a budget of €8m ($8.5m), one of Zentropa’s biggest productions in years. The film is being readied for an autumn 2023 launch and will be released locally by Nordisk.
Louise Vesth, one of the heads of Zentropa and Lars von Trier’s long-time collaborator, is lead producer.
The film will also star Amanda Collin, most recently seen in the lead role of Ridley Scott’s sci-fi series Raised By Wolves for HBO Max.
The script has been written by Arcel alongside Anders Thomas Jensen, the writer and director of Mikkelsen action-drama Riders Of Justice. They have adapting it from Danish bestseller The Captain And Ann Barbara.
The story is set in the mid-1700s when Danish King Frederik V declared that the wild heath of Jutland should be tamed, cultivated, and colonized so that civilization could spread and new taxes be generated for the royal house. But nobody dared go to this brutal land until a lone soldier named Ludvig Kahlen stepped up.
Co-producers are Zentropa Berlin and Zentropa Sweden in cooperation with TV2 Denmark, Nordisk Film & TV Fond, SVT, Koch Films in co-production with Film i Väst with support from Danish Film Institute, Eurimages, Den Vestdanske Filmpulje, Deutscher Filmförderfonds, Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung, MOIN Film Fund Hamburg Schleswig-Holstein, Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, Czech Film Fund and Swedish Film Institute. Creative Europe MEDIA supported the development.
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