Sonet's time under the highly respected Peter Possne is over. Starting next year, it will be run by the current vice president Mathias Berggren who will lower the company's investment in Swedish films to re-focus on the theatrical distribution of foreign films.
"We are going to go back to acquiring quality foreign titles and bigger entertaining movies," said Berggren who first joined the company in 2000 as head of legal affairs. "This is a bit like going back to basics - as this is how Sonet started 23 years ago, with Possne importing and releasing quality European films".
Owned since 1995 by MTG, Sonet's future line-up of 10 to 15 films per year will include a mix of art-house and mainstream quality films, mostly non-English language films, while the Swedish input will be cut by half, from 6-8 movies per year to 3 or 4.
To have more muscles in the highly competitive international acquisition arena, Sonet has just teamed up with Pan Vision who is among the top Nordic home entertainment distributors, Cinema Mondo in Finland and CCV in Norway to secure distribution rights to quality foreign titles for the Nordic region. Recent pick ups include the horror film The Orphanage executive produced by Guillermo Del Toro, and Fox and the Child by the director of March of the Penguins Luc Jacquet.
For the local film industry which over the last decade has relied heavily on Possne's commitment to new and established filmmakers such as Lukas Moodysson, Josef Fares, Kjell Sundvall, Maria Blom, Jesper Ganslandt or Johan Brisinger, the news of his imminent departure from Sonet sounded like a bombshell.
Mikael Flodell (Drama Svecia) who produced Sonet's biggest hit this year Underbara älskade (276,000 admissions) spoke to Nordisk Film & TV Fond about Possne's unique position in the Swedish film landscape. "He is the only player we have in Sweden that is a producer and distributor very much like a Hollywood executive: very charismatic, a visionary, a real entrepreneur and we used him that way for our film. In fact, Possne's part in making our film a success was tremendous: he has great relationships with SF and convinced them to give us more theatres. His departure is a big loss for the Swedish film industry and for Sonet as well, although Mathias Berggren is very professional as well".
Possne was behind some of Sweden's biggest hits in the 1990s and early 2000 such as Colin Nutley's House of Angels (1992), Kjell Sundvall's The Hunters (1996), Lukas Moodysson's Together (2000), and Kay Pollak's As It is in Heaven (over 1.3 million admissions in 2005). But too few local films in which Sonet had invested over the last three years delivered at the box office, and in 2006, Sonet's market share dropped by 8.2% from 2005, to 2.3%.
All is not gloom and doom however for Swedish cinema as Possne is expected to bounce back very soon in a new top position. "Deep down, I am a very enthusiastic entrepreneur who wants to do a lot for Swedish films and this opportunity will be even bigger in the future", he told Swedish agency TT, without giving more details about his next move.