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Fantasy fans rejoice! Astrid Lindgren‘s beloved classic novel The Brothers Lionheart is getting an event-limited TV series adaptation! Academy Award winner Thomas Vinterberg will direct and co-write the adaptation with Tony and Olivier Award winner Simon Stephens (Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime). Both will serve as Executive Producers alongside Michael Ellenberg, Lars Blomgren, Lindsey Springer of Media Res, and The Astrid Lindgren Company.

Per today’s official press release for The Brothers Lionheart courtesy of Media Res:

A beloved family classic in Scandinavia and around the world, The Brothers Lionheart has been translated into 50 languages and takes place in the fantasy tradition of magic, myth, poetry, and adventure where the work of C. S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Hayao Miyazaki reside. It is a breathtaking coming-of-age tale nestled inside an epic fantasy adventure story. The novel tells the story of two brothers – Karl and Jonathan Lion...

Thomas Vinterberg, the Oscar-winning director of Another Round, is turning to television for his next project, signing on to adapt the fantasy novel The Brothers Lionheart as a limited event series for The Morning Show producers Media Res.

Vinterberg will adapt the beloved children’s book, from Pippi Longstocking author Astrid Lindgren together with Tony and Olivier Award-winning British playwright Simon Stephens (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime). Both will executive produce the series together with Michael Ellenberg, Lars Blomgren and Lindsey Springer of Media Res, alongside The Astrid Lindgren Company.

While not as well known outside internationally as Pippi Longstocking, Lindgren’s coming-of-age tale of two brothers, Karl and Jonathan Lion, in the mythical land of Nangiyala, and their battle against the evil tyrant Tengil, is a family classic in Scandinavia and has been translated into some 50 languages worldwide.

“The Brothers Lionheart is possibly the most...

Media Res and Thomas Vinterberg have unveiled plans to adapt The Brothers Lionheart, the Swedish fantasy novel from Pippi Longstocking creator Astrid Lindgren, into a limited series.

Vinterberg, the director of acclaimed European hits including Oscar winner Another Round and The Hunt, will direct and co-write the adaptation with Simon Stephens, who adapted Mark Haddon’s novel Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time for the stage.

The project marks the first production from Media Res International led by Blomgren. Media Res recently received investment from Redbird Imi and plans to expand its US and international scripted business.

Scandinavian...

Independent studio Media Res (The Morning Show) has enlisted Oscar-winning filmmaker Thomas Vinterberg (Another Round) to spearhead a TV adaptation of the Astrid Lindgren’s beloved children’s fantasy novel The Brothers Lionheart into an event limited series.

The Danish filmmaker will direct the potential family series, which he will co-write with Tony and Olivier Award playwight Simon Stephens (Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime). Both will serve as executive producers, alongside Michael Ellenberg, Lars Blomgren and Lindsey Springer of Media Res, as well as The Astrid Lindgren Company. Development on the project begins this month.

The Brothers Lionheart, from the renowned Swedish author of children’s classics such as Pippi Longstocking, Emil of Lönneberga and Karlsson-on-the-Roof, is a coming of age tale, nestled inside an epic fantasy adventure story.

The novel tells the story of two brothers – Karl and Jonathan Lion – as they leave the natural world...

The Hollywood adaptation of Headhunters author Jo Nesbo's crime novel The Snowman has got itself a new director. And it's a good one.Originally announced with Martin Scorsese at the controls, directing duties on The Snowman have now been passed over to Let The Right One In and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy director Tomas Alfredson with Scorsese remaining in an executive producer role. Alfredson is a busy man at the moment with a big budget adaptation of Astrid Lindgren's The Brothers Lionheart also recently announced as his next Swedish project and there is no word yet which of these projects will go first....

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

Making use of beautiful imagery and an inventive story, Anders Walter’s short film Helium deals with the afterlife from the perspective of a sick child and a man who wants to help him minimize the pain. After he befriends Alfred (Pelle Falk Krusbæk), a young boy who is dying, hospital janitor Enzo (Casper Crump) decides to create an imaginary world for him. He tells him stories of another realm where everything is exciting and colorful, and where he will never have to suffer again. Touching and visually captivating the film combines fantasy elements with its emotional subject matter to creative a small gem of a film. Walter talked to us about the non-existent budget for his project, his inspiration, and finding the right approach to talk to children about death.

Carlos Aguilar: How did the idea for this particular project develop?

Anders Walter: I knew I wanted to do a little story that celebrated fantasy. I guess having a little boy dying is maybe an extreme way to tell a story about fantasy, but for me it was very important to make a story about how fantasy works for children and young people, and how they can use it when things get very dark in life. I’m very curious about how kids use fantasy when things look darkest in their lives.

Aguilar: It is interesting you mention the importance of the boy having this fantasy, but although he imagines it, the janitor creates the story. This man is the one who invents it help the the boy. Why did you decide to make him someone outside the boy’s family?

Walter: In the first draft I wrote we were also dealing with the parents’ pain. But having to deal with the parents’ pain was just a completely different story, it was a much more hardcore story. It was just too much to look into the eyes of the parents and see the pain they were in because it’s such a devastating thing to lose a child. It wouldn’t have worked for me to do that kind of hardcore story, that’s why I got rid of the parents and instead had this kind of eccentric janitor who comes up with this fairytale. In the film I obviously wanted to say that there are parents around him, but I just showed them with their backs turned in one single frame. Looking into their eyes would have made it a totally different story.

Aguilar: This is a 20-minute short film, given the scope of the story and the impressive visuals, did you ever contemplate making it into a feature-length piece?

Walter: This was always thought of as a short film, as short story. I don’t think this would have worked that well as a feature. I think 1 and half hours or 2 hours of film with a premise that a little boy is going to die might be a little too much. Also you know right away that this film is about him dying, he is not going to survive, and I just think for a feature film it wouldn’t have worked for me, that’s how I feel about it. It was always planned as a short film.

Aguilar: One of the most interesting elements of the film is the magical realism and the visuals that you use to present this alternative world. What was the inspiration for it?

Walter: My favorite book as a child is kind of an inspiration for this story, it is a book by a Swedish writer Astrid Lindgren, she is probably the biggest children’s literature writer in Scandinavia, she wrote a book called The Brothers Lionheart. It deals with a child dying and going to a fantasy world, it just had such a big impact on me when I was I was a kid. That kind of stayed with me and has stayed with me for my whole life. I think I was maybe a little inspired by that. Regarding those sequences when we go into the boy’s mind and visualize how he sees what the janitor tells him, my background is in illustration. I did graphic novels for 20 years in Denmark and illustrations for children’s books, so normally I do a lot of visuals like that. For me it was just something I’ve been doing for many years while doing comic books, I just had to make it work as live action also.

Aguilar: With all the wonderfully achieved CGI and other visual effects, ‘Helium’ feels like a big budget type of project. Was it difficult to get that kind of quality working with a short film’s resources?

Walter: Actually the budget for this film was $0. This film was made for $5,000 [Laughs]. In Denmark we are dependent on getting government funding to make films, we got the $5,000 to start developing the script. Then when they read the shooting script they didn’t want to go and support it, but both me and my producer were very much in love with the film. We just talked to all our friends and convinced everybody to show up and work for free. So actually it’s a film without any budget at all.

Aguilar: This is a really heartbreaking story. Was it difficult to find the right boy to play the part with that specific emotion? What was that process like?

Walter: The child, Pelle, he had just been in another Danish film, a feature film. I knew they had been casting for half a year to try to find a kid for that feature, and then they found Pelle who is just fantastic. I kind of just stole him right off the set from that picture. I knew he was great I saw him in that feature and everybody loved him in Denmark, so I knew I was in good hands with him. I also knew I had to find a guy that could do as great as he did because the film wouldn’t work if we didn’t have a boy who could fill in the character. He was just great to work with. He just got the kind of feeling that he should stay in, he was very good at adapting into the mood of the film. It was very easy actually.

Aguilar: In your opinion, since this is the central theme of your film, why do you think it is so difficult to explain the concept of death to children?

Walter: I don’t necessarily think it’s difficult, but I just think that for children the concept of death is so far away. Of course some of them experience losing their grandparents or other family members, but children are such imaginary creatures so it doesn’t work for most of them if you just say that when you die everything is just finished. It’s just something they don’t want to buy into because that’s not the way their brain works. It is a lot of easier for them if you come up with an alternative world, then they can cope with it very easily. I had to speak with the actor about this, and just sitting down with him and saying “Oh when you die then you did, and nothing happens” he doesn’t get it, he is like “whatever” But if you tell him to imagine you travel somewhere else he totally gets it and accepts that you cannot stay here on this planet forever, but it’s Ok because you go somewhere else. I think children are built in a more positive way before they get destroyed by the cynics of the world [Laughs] , they have that kind of naïve imagination and that way of thinking about the afterlife. I think it is not a problem speaking about death to children, not at all.

Aguilar: How has this Oscar nomination change your prospects and the future of your career?

Walter: Personally for me right now it is just a lot of great experiences, to be here now in L.A. and experience all the Hollywood madness. I’m just having fun and enjoying myself. Obviously now my producer and I, we have easier access to material here in Hollywood. We have access to great scripts, and we are going to try to get some feature projects going here and we will also try to get some projects going in Denmark. I think it helps; it opens doors, no question about it.

Aguilar: Any specific projects you are looking into as you plan your next step?

There are two children books here in America I’m trying to get my hands on. I know they are out there in Hollywood, so I’m tying to go after them.

A little like being told not to think of an elephant, when the small group of press who got to meet Tomas Alfredson at the Marrakech Film Festival was asked in advance not to ask about his next project, it was pretty much all any of us could think about. The “Let the Right One In” and “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” director has long been attached to an adaptation of “The Brothers Lionheart,” a children’s fantasy story by beloved Swedish author Astrid Lindgren (who also created Pippi Longstocking), and the version of the film that he was putting together was at one point rumored to have the highest ever budget for a Scandinavian film. Which is perhaps why Alfredson is a little gunshy about talking about it—in fact he told us that he doesn’t like to speak about projects before they are 100% financed and set in stone,...

Berlin – Swedish director Tomas Alfredson will follow up his acclaimed Tinker Tailer Solider Spy with a remake of a Swedish classic. Alfredson picked up the rights to fantasy novel The Brothers Lionheart from Swedish children's author Astrid Lindgren (Pippi Longstocking) and, together with producer Peter Gustafsson, began shopping the project to buyers in Cannes last year. Director Olle Hellbom’s 1977 adaptation of the book, a story of two brothers who meet up in the afterlife and have fantastic adventures, is an enduring Scandinavian classic. The project reteams Alfredson with Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy screenwriter Peter Straughan and Let the

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After the success of his adaptations of "Let the Right One In" and le Carre classic "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy," filmmaker Tomas Alfredson has settled on a film version of the children’s novel "The Brothers Lionheart" as his next project.

The $50 million project, currently targeting a Christmas 2014 release, will be the most expensive Scandinavian production in history.

Set in a magical land of the afterlife, the story follows two brothers who join the resistance against an evil ruler who enforces control over the land with a dragon.

'Right One' author John Ajvide Lindqvist is penning the script based on Astrid Lindgren‘s work which has been labelled as "unflinchingly" dark and subversive.

The project looks to have taken priority over the 'Tinker' follow-up "Smiley’s People" which remains in development.

Source: MovieZine via The Playlist...

When it was revealed in February of this year that Smiley's People, the sequel to Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, wouldn't be starting production until 2014, it opened a gap in director Tomas Alfredson's schedule. And it was not just any gap - it was a gap that would allow him to move forward on the fantasy feature The Brothers Lionheart. Swedish website MovieZine (via The Playlist) has confirmed that the Astrid Lindgren adaptation will be the next film on the slate for the Let The Right One In director. For those unfamiliar with the children's books, the plot follows two brothers who go on adventures in the afterlife. The material is best known for the way it approaches dark themes with such young characters. The source says that the movie "will become the most expensive movie ever made in Scandinavia," working with a budget of $50 million (which, by comparison, is...

Jina Jay Casting 

Casting Search

Seeking two boys for lead roles in a new Tomas Alfredson English language film The Brothers Lionheart, shooting Summer 2013 in Europe.

No Experience Necessary.

The Roles:

Searching for two caucasian boys aged 8 - 10 years and 13 - 15 years for the film of The Brothers Lionheart, based on the Swedish novel of the same name by Astrid Lindgren.

The film is set in Europe and will be directed by Tomas Alfredson who most recently directed the award winning film Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and previously Let The Right One In.

To audition, please send a self tape.

*Please note if you have already auditioned there is no need to submit again*

Jina Jay is a casting director whose credits include War Horse, Tintin And The Secret Of The Unicorn, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, Atonement and Billy Elliot.

For full details...

Director Tomas Alfredson is determined to tackle every genre. In 2008, the then 43-year-old director collaborated with novelist John Ajvide Lindqvist to create Let the Right One In, a horror film that is at some moments shocking and at others extremely moving. Three years later, Alfredson directed two star-studded actors, Gary Oldman and Colin Firth, in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Now Alfredson turns his attention to fantasy with his new project, The Brothers Lionheart....

Director Tomas Alfredson first caught Hollywood’s attention due to the worldwide success of his Swedish language horror film Let The Right One In. And he inched even closer to global notoriety by making Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy with the UK based company Studio Canal and a bevy of Britain’s top acting talent. One would think that whatever the director is doing next would be a much-hyped affair, but mum has been the word up until this point as to what Alfredson’s Tinker Tailor follow-up is going to be. Some news out of Sweden might soon put an end to everyone’s speculations, however. Apparently Alfredson has acquired the rights to Astrid Lindgren’s novel “The Brothers Lionheart,” with the intentions of turning it into a feature film. Lindgren, who many people know as the author of the Pippi Longstocking books, first published “The Brothers Lionheart” back in 1973. It’s a fantastical tale about a...

So, we finally know what Tomas Alfredson wants to do next. Believe it or not, but Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy director plans to bring us an adaptation of Astrid Lindgren‘s book The Brothers Lionheart. And yes, he’s quite serious about this project, he already has all the rights, and producer Peter Pjodor Gustafsson on board [...]

Continue reading Tomas Alfredson’s Next is The Brothers Lionheart on FilmoFilia.

Related posts: Step Brothers Sequel First Brothers Poster Todd Phillips Teams with the Duplass Brothers for Mule Adaptation...

Coming off of two straight critical darlings in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Let The Right One In, director Tomas Alfredson has become one of the art film world’s most acclaimed commodities. His brand of austere and chilly dramas has made him an indie darling, and now, he’s found yet another project to call his own.

Read more on Tomas Alfredson set to helm adaptation of Astrid Lindgren novel ‘The Brothers Lionheart’...

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Swedish filmmaker Tomas Alfredson first drew notice Stateside for helming the game-changing vampire drama Let the Right One In. Blending unapologetic gore with the tender but troublesome tale of young love that develops between a bullied young boy and the mysterious girl next door, Alfredson won over horror and art house fans alike. Then, he followed up with the ambitious espionage epic Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, which won widespread critical acclaim and scored three Oscar nods including a long-overdue nomination for the incomparable Gary Oldman. Curiously, one of the few things these two films have in common.aside from critical praise.is both are inspired by novels. So, it's not surprising that Twitch (via Screen Daily) got word that Alfredson's latest project is another adaptation. More specifically, Alfredson has purchased the movie rights to Astrid Lindgren's The Brothers Lionheart, a Swedish fantasy novel that was written for children but...

According to The Playlist, director Tomas Alfredson, who recently gave us the excellent Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, is attached to The Brothers Lionheart. The $30 million dollar film will be based on Astrid Lindgren's novel, which follows two brothers "the heroic, brave and strong Karl and his polar opposite Jon -- who both die, but are reunited in the afterworld Nangijala that is under threat from cruel tyrant."

Read more at We Got This Covered...

Though his name was in the running to inherit directing duties on the sequel The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (which is starting the casting process with a shortlist of big names for a pivotal new role in the sequel), director Tomas Alfredson has been pretty low key following his award worthy work on Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Now ScreenDaily (via The Playlist) says Alfredson has lined up another adaptation with his producer Peter Pjodor Gustafsson by landing the rights to Astrid Lindgren's 1973 children's fantasy novel The Brothers Lionheart. However, this isn't going to be a big family film with only a $30 million budget. Here's the official synopsis of the book, which sounds like something different for Alfredson: There's no one Karl Lion loves more than his older brother, Jonathan, who is brave, strong, and handsome - everything Karl believes he is not. Karl never wants to be parted from him.

I’ve waited for this news since I first saw Tomas Alfredson‘s near (if not, as I suspect a third viewing will confirm, true) masterpiece Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. AICN learned (and Twitch later confirmed) that the Swedish helmer is looking to return to his genre days with The Brothers Lionheart, a dark fantasy tale being shaped by Let the Right One In author and screenwriter John Ajvide Lindqvist.

The source material, written by Astrid Lindgren, revolves around two brothers living in the fantasy world of Nangijala — a place that, from what summaries indicate, is actually an afterlife — where a tyrannical ruler controls the land with a dragon; after joining a rebel group, they attempt to bring his rein to an end. Some other tidbits from quick online readings truly reinforce what a dark film this would make — I wouldn’t expect any studio to adapt the story in its pre-existing form — which,...

Despite the critical acclaim and modest box office success of "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy," director Tomas Alfredson hasn't been attached to many -- or any -- movies in the way you might expect. His name was briefly on the shortlist for "Catching Fire" and his adaptation of Philip Reeves' "Larklight" is still brewing, though when we spoke with him at the end of last year, he wasn't sure where on his schedule that might be. But it seems another project has caught his attention, one based on a book, and the helmer quietly hit Cannes earlier in the month to drum up interest.

Alfredson has snapped up the rights to Astrid Lindgren's "The Brothers Lionheart" and together with producer Peter Pjodor Gustafsson, is pulling the pieces together for the $30 million dollar movie. The story follows two brothers -- the heroic, brave and strong Karl and his polar opposite Jon -- who both die,...