Local movies
are booming in Denmark this year, accounting for more than 30% of the market
and outperforming Hollywood fare like Iron Man 3, Fast & Furious 6 and Despicable
Me 2. The top film of the year so far is Thomas Vinterberg´s
Foreign Language Oscar entry The Hunt. The Mads Mikkelsen-starrer has taken about $8M since its release in
January. Other successes include Rasmus Heide´s heist comedy All
For Two and family
film My African Adventure. Jumping to No. 2 for the year
this week is Mikkel Nørgaard‘s The Keeper Of Lost
Causes (Kvinden I Buret).
The film
debuted on October 3rd and has now taken in about $7.7M. If it continues apace,
it is expected to overtake The Hunt as
the year´s top grosser. Zentropa
produced Keeper Of Lost Causes, the first installment in its Department
Q franchise that´s based
on the best-sellling books by Jussi Adler-Olsen. It´s the first in a series of
films that have been penned by A Royal Affair‘s Nikolaj Arcel. They focus on chief detective Carl Mørck who´s banished to a basement
office to run a cold case division. Nikolaj Lie Kaas (Angels & Demons) and Fares Fares (Zero Dark Thirty) star. The first installment settles
on the case of a well-known female politician who vanished five years ago from
a passenger ferry. The only witness is her brain-damaged brother who was found
on the car deck, screaming at the top of his lungs. The case was classified as
an apparent suicide, but Mørck isn´t buying it and sets off with partner Assad
on a journey that takes them deep below the polished surface of Scandinavia.
TrustNordisk has inked several international deals on the movie since showing a promo
reel in Berlin. A U.S. deal has yet to surface, although I hear distributors
are circling. TrustNordisk has sold several of its titles this year to Magnolia
Pictures which picked up Lukas Moodysson´s Swedish coming-of-age taleWe Are The Best!; Norwegian action adventure pic Ragnarok;
Norwegian thrillerPioneer; and Lars
von Trier´s sexapalooza Nymphomaniac. That film opens in Denmark on December
25th, likely bumping up local share even further. Meanwhile, Danes will be able
to count on three more films in the Department Qseries. Nørgaard started shooting the
first sequel, The Absent One, in September. Here´s a trailer for The
Keeper Of Lost Causes: