For the first time ever, Nordisk Film is going to release a Swedish film almost simultaneously across Scandinavia. Based on Stieg Larsson's best-selling Millennium trilogy, Men Who Hate Women directed by Niels Arden Oplev, will be released this Friday in Denmark and Sweden, with Norway and Finland following in March.
The event movie, produced by Sweden's Yellow Bird with support, from among others, Nordisk Film & TV Fond, will be launched this week on 166 Swedish and 100 Danish screens. Norwegian audiences will have to wait until March 13 to see it on 86 screens and Finns will see it on March 27, on 15 screens. "Originally, we planned the release in all four Scandinavian territories day and date, but because of competition from other films in Norway and Finland, we decided to delay it in those territories", explained Jan Lehmann, head of Nordisk Film Distribution in Denmark. "Still, it is more or less a simultaneous release, and it's the first time we do this kind of pan-Scandinavian launch for a Swedish film."
Larsson's Millennium brings a unique opportunity as over ten million people around the world have read his trilogy, including almost three million Swedes, 1.1 million Danes and under one million Norwegians. It was slightly less popular in Finland, hence the smaller release.
To give Oplev's film its best chance to reach the widest audience in Scandinavia, the film is being marketed as an international thriller similar to the one previously used by Nordisk Film on The Da Vinci Code - another film based on a best-selling novel that was very popular in particular in Sweden and in Denmark. Two teaser trailers of the film were made and ran for eight months and the final trailer was shown closer to the release date.
Another key element of Nordisk Film's strategy was its decision not to reveal any image of Swedish actress Noomi Rapace as hacker Lisbeth Salander, until just before the theatrical opening in Sweden and Denmark. "The Salander character is the person everyone is fascinated about, so we decided to keep the secret around her until the very end," continues Lehmann.
With a good film, strong want to see and level of awareness, Nordisk Films also use word of mouth at the heart of its strategy and Lehmann said around 40,000 tickets were sold in Denmark from preview screenings, a level never seen before.
To further bolster the release, promotional tie-ins were put together with Sony Eriksson in Sweden and Telia in Denmark, and publishers in the both countries have reprinted the Millennium trilogy with the poster image on the book covers. The film has also received very good reviews in the print media in both territories.
Internationally the film will open in France and in Italy in May 2009. Other territories that have acquired rights of the feature film from international sales company Zodiak Entertainment Distribution include Spain, Poland, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, and the Netherlands.
Following Men Who Hate Women Yellow Bird is also producing a further six TV films in Swedish based on the entire trilogy which will be broadcast by SVT (Sweden), ZDF (Germany), DR (Denmark), TV2 (Norway) and MTV3 (Finland) in 2010.
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"I do it for people who don't always have the means to pay full prices."
19 year old movie pirate when asked his motive for uploading the latest feature films.
A Hollywood blockbuster film is typically downloaded 2m-3m times worldwide in the month of its official release.
Source: Envisional, Internet monitoring firm