You just received the Innovation award from the Norwegian cinema organization ‘Fremtidens kino’, and your film The Wave is the biggest grossing film of 2015 and one of the biggest Norwegian films of all time. What does this mean to you?
Are Heidenstrøm: We are honored to have received the award. It inspires us to continue to be innovative and to keep pushing limits. It also means a lot for us that others appreciate our work in making original stories and challenging typical American genres that haven't been done in Norway before.
With The Wave, you took many risks by creating the first Norwegian disaster movie. Looking back, what were the key decisions you took that clearly were the right choices and turned the project into the success we know?
AH: Firstly, producer Martin Sundland got the idea from a newspaper article seven years ago. At that time the technology for doing water simulations of photo-realistic quality was extremely difficult and expensive. We started developing the story as soon as we knew we could do it on a Norwegian budget. Compared to many American disaster films, we focused more on the human drama to get emotionally attached to the family and to make the story before the disaster occurs, as realistic as possible. We believe the reason for success is that we managed to balance the spectacular scenes with the emotional scenes. That allowed us to add something different than what you would normally expect from the genre - a kind of Scandinavian flavor.
Internationally as well the film has been a hit, both at festivals and with world distributors. How early did you start working with TrustNordisk on the international sales and festival strategy?
AH: Every year we have several sit downs with TrustNordisk to discuss future projects. The strategies we work on have different scenarios; we usually start pre-selling the film when we have a teaser or promo, and don´t let ourselves be dependent of international pre-sales for the financing of our films.
Today what is the share of commercials and fiction in your annual turnover, and are you tempted by TV drama?
AH: This varies every year, but so far both divisions are doing very well. We are tempted by TV drama as some of our projects could have a better life as a long-runners rather than 90 minutes.
Your company is seen as one of Scandinavia’s top purveyors of quality genre films. How do you intend to maintain that position?
AH: To maintain that position we have to stay focused on films that we are passionate about. It means that we have to say no to many projects. We are eager to start shooting one or two new films next year, but we are dependent on receiving support from the Norwegian Film Institute.
What projects do you have in production or development?
AH: We are in post-production with our first children’s movie, Snekker Andersen og Julenissen, based on a story by Alf Prøysen. It is a well-known Norwegian Christmas tale of the meeting between a carpenter and the real Santa Claus.
If we get support from the NFI, we will also shoot in 2016 a high concept thriller based on the true story of Martin Pedersen, Norway’s greatest bank robber of all time. He robbed 19 banks between 1974 and 1980 and lived a fascinating double life. The project written by Harald Rosenløw Eeg[co-writer of The Wave] will be directed by Marius Holst.
We are also hoping to shoot a children’s movie inspired by films such as Back to the Future and Home Alone, and look forward to working again with Roar Uthaug, after his debut in Hollywood [on a Tomb Raider reboot].
Do you feel the production support system in Norway is adapted to the marketplace that is more and more polarized between event movies on one side and small films on the end?
AH: Today it is more and more difficult to get support for the big genre films in Norway. This is a negative trend, as these movies sell approximately 80 % of all the cinema tickets. However, they only receive around 30 % of the funding from the Norwegian Film Institute. From our point of view these films are suffering because the system wants to “protect” the small art house films. It is important that we have both art house films and big genre films, but if this trend is allowed to continue, the market share of Norwegian films may fall drastically. This is a shame, since the quality of Norwegian films has improved significantly over the last few years.