Best-selling author/screenwriter Jens Lapidus and producer Niklas Wikström Nicastro have launched the film and TV production company with the intention to offer ‘meaningful and intriguing’ stories to global audiences.

Both Lapidus and former SF Studios producer Wikström Nicastro are heavyweights in the Scandinavian scripted content industry.

A former criminal defence lawyer, Lapidus turned to screenwriting with the Snabba Cash (Easy Money) - Stockholm Noir film trilogy, produced by Wikström Nicastro. The two collaborated again on the Snabba Cash Swedish crime series, launched on Netflix April 7 - which has received strong reviews in the press - as well as on the multi-season drama series The Lawyer, produced for NENT Group’s Viaplay.

Lapidus’s books The VIP-Room, Stockholm Delete and Top Dog were also turned into the TV series Top Dog by Filmlance International for C More/TV4 and ZDF.

Meanwhile Wikström Nicastro’s production credit also includes the double Oscar-nominated A Man Called Ove and TV series Alex.

“Nicklas and I have worked together on several productions in recent years, and together we have found a way of expression that we now want to develop with Strive Stories,” said Lapidus, about their new Stockholm-based outfit. “I love the teamwork that the creative process entails, many ideas are born first in dialogue with other creative people. And in that meeting, one plus one becomes more than two,” he stressed.

Explaining his vision for Strive Stories, the internationally acclaimed writer said: “Reaching a large audience is of course central, but we also want everything we do to make a real impact and have a deeper meaning. In addition to engaging the audience with really good entertainment, we want to say something about the world we live in.”

Wikström Nicastro for his part, said creating film and TV dramas “is mainly about passion, but also a drive and a need to do this at the highest possible level.” For him, “the key to achieving this is always about bringing together the best creators and finding a common vision, to create the best conditions for a collaboration where everyone involved gets a maximum outlet for their ideas and their talent.”

He goes on: “The idea that Jens and I have with Strive Stories is to create exactly that, an independent production company where the creative process and the will to turn grand and meaningful stories into film and TV, is at the centre.“

Lapidus and Wikström Nicastro said they are currently at “an exciting construction phase that is all about creating and further developing ideas and projects.”

The partners are planning to expand their team, “to build a company driven by creativity, passion and love” according to Wikström Nicastro.

Watch the trailer for Snabba Cash: CLICK HERE.