Bille August’s Lucky Per will open in cinemas before airing on TV2 in 2019 and Mikael Wulff’s Perfect Places will premiere on TV2 Zulu later this year.

Lucky Per (Lykke-Per) is the Danish commercial channel’s most ambitious drama project ever, based on Henrik Pontoppidan’s literary classic. Bille August has written the screen version with his son Anders August (The Legacy) and is currently filming it in Copenhagen, before moving to Jylland, Fyn and Austria.

In the title roles are Esben Smed (Follow the Money) and Katrine Greis-Rosenthal (The Bridge 3, The Absent One), who play alongside Peter Plaugborg, Rasmus Bjerg, Anders Hove, Tammi Øst and Tommy Kenter. Set in the turn of the last century, it’s a story of personal ambitions and difficult choices to make between career and family life. Palme’ d’or winning director August said: “Lucky Per is a modern story and at the same time an amazing love story, perhaps one of the most beautiful ever written.”

The feature film and four part mini-series is produced by Nordisk Film for TV2 with support from the Danish Film Institute’s Public Service Fund among others. DR Sales handles sales on the mini-series.

The eight-part series Perfect Places (Perfekte steder) is written/directed by Mikael Wulff, stand-up comedian, writer and co-illustrator of Wulffmorgenthaler comic strips with Anders Morgenthaler. “After many years of comedy, I want to make a story that has a totally different mood,” said Wulff. Perfect Places is a romantic, intimate love story depicting an unlikely yet inevitable love, the dream-like crush between two people in their mid-20s during the summer, before life starts to be about mortgages and having children.” Gustav Giese (Northwest, When Animals Dream) and Sara Hjort (Below the Surface) play the main parts.

Other ambitious upcoming TV2 series include Norskov 2, Greyzone and Christoffer Boe’s Warrior.