Fantefilm’s Teddy’s Christmas scores at home and in Germany

Teddy’s Christmas (Teddybjørnens jul) is part of a Christmas trilogy inspired by Alf Prøysen’s universe, produced by Norway’s top company Fantefilm, specialised in event movies (The Wave, The North Sea). The heart-warming movie mixing live action and CGI, is enjoying a good run both at home and internationally.

Distributed in Germany and dubbed by the indie distributor Capelight, the film is playing in 563 screens, an all-time record, according to Solveig Langeland of Stuttgart-based sales company Sola Media. “Never before has a Norwegian film been released in that many Germany cinemas,” said the sales agent, specialised in kids fare.

So far, the film has sold over 60,000 tickets in Germany, but final figures are expected to climb to 200,000, thanks to the lack of competition from local Christmas films, according to Langeland. The last Norwegian film which had a similar wide release in Germany was Petter Næss’ Elling, which ended up with approximately 500,000 admissions over a six-month run.

Teddy’s Christmas is due to open in half a dozen other European territories ahead of Christmas including Poland on December 9 via Vivarto.

Meanwhile in Norway, the film released November 11 by Nordisk Film continues to dominate the local chart, ahead of Walt Disney’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, released at the same time. So far more than 150,000 Norwegians have watched the family film on 143 silver screens.

Morten Christoffersen, Nordisk Film’s country manager in Norway said he is very happy with the film’s performance. Despite the fact that the cinema market is still not back to normal after Covid, the movie is doing great. Holding the no 1 position in the market almost every day since the launch, is showing the strength of the combination of Alf Prøysen’s universe and a Christmas movie”, he said.

Fantefilm producer Thea Benedikte Karlsen added: "It is very exciting and inspiring to see how our film adaptations, based on Alf Prøysen’s universe has such a high standing amongst the Norwegian population. The Norwegian Christmas tradition and Alf Prøysen have walked hand in hand since the 1950’s, and they still do. There is a warmth and an authenticity in Alf’s stories that reaches out to people across generations and the different age groups. The fact that Fantefilm’s Prøysen Trilogy is now seen by over one million Norwegians in the cinema, strongly proves this."

Teddy’s Christmas tells the eight-year old Mariann who falls in love with a little teddy bear that she sees on the top shelf of a lottery booth at a Christmas market. The story inspired by Alf Prøysen’s song ‘Teddybjørnens vise’ was co-written for the cinema by Harald Rosenløw Eeg and Lars Gudmestad. The feature received support from Nordisk Film & TV Fond.

The first two Fantefilm Christmas films based on Prøysen’s universe were Santa Swap-Merry Christmas Mr Andersen (2016) directed by Terge Rangnes, and its follow up Forgotten Christmas (2019), directed by Andrea Eckerbom.

Commenting on the current cinema market, Christoffersen said “it is still struggling to get back to normal. A lot of the medium and small titles are really falling behind, and the big titles are taking up more space. We can also see that movies are having slower starts and longer tails. So cinemas really need to pay attention to the visits.”