Chernin Entertainment to adapt hit Swedish thriller novel into series

PanARMENIAN.Net - Another hot Swedish novel is headed for an U.S. screen adaptation. 20th Century Fox TV has acquired rights to the upcoming thriller De Redan Döda by author Robert Karjel, for studio-based Chernin Entertainment to develop as a drama series with Sweden-based Yellow Bird Entertainment, Deadline said.

Titled The Swede, the project centers on a Swedish secret service agent summoned to a remote U.S. military base to interrogate a prisoner thought to be a fellow Swede. He is drawn into the complex investigation led by a female CIA agent, where the evidence takes them from the 2004 Thailand tsunami to a terrorist attack in Topeka, Kansas, and where no one is who they seem to be.

De Redan Döda follows in the footsteps of the Millennium trilogy by Swedish author Stieg Larsson, which became the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo movie franchise and Leif G.W. Persson’s Backstrom books, which have been in series development at 20th TV for the past two seasons, most recently going to pilot at CBS starring Rainn Wilson last spring.

The original Millennium Swedish trilogy starring Noomi Rapace was produced by Yellow Bird, whose Berna Levin and Marianne Gray will executive produce The Swede with Chernin Entertainment’s Peter Chernin and Katherine Pope. Karjel, a helicopter pilot and lieutenant colonel in the Swedish Air Force, is the only Swedish pilot who has trained with U.S. Marine Corps and flown its attack helicopters. De Redan Döda was a hot title at the Frankfurt Book Fair earlier this month and was acquired by HarperCollins for publication in the U.S.