StudioCanal pacts with Danish dynamos for SAM

The company will work on both TV and film projects, with initial emphasis on TV series for the international market.

Foldager, who has produced films for Lars von Trier and who now runs Copenhagen’s Meta Film, will serve as partner, CEO and executive producer.

Sveistrup and Price will continue to work on their own projects as well as being partners in the company and executive producing works.

StudioCanal will be a partner as well as distributor for the company’s projects; it gives the company a strengthened presence in Scandinavia.

 Olivier Courson, StudioCanal Chairman and CEO, said: “SAM is meeting StudioCanal’s ambitions to develop TV series and strengthen our relationships with Scandinavian talents. We’ve already been working with Tomas Alfredson, Susanne Bier, and Tobias Lindholm on feature films. It is a great pleasure to work now with Adam, Søren and Meta and hopefully many other talents. SAM can become a great creative platform with very complementary shareholders, and we have great ambitions for this nice venture.”

Sveistrup said: “I am excited to get started. With SAM, we have got a unique creative and ambitious platform I expect a lot from. I hope that we will attract a lot of talent and passion - and that we will create the best possible framework for creators in the North. Scandinavia has its own tradition of storytelling. SAM will take up this tradition but also challenge the conventions and create something that constantly challenges the audience and ourselves”.

Price said: ”The modern TV-series is going through a golden period and it is great to find that also Nordic TV series - not least Danish TV-series – enjoy great success in many countries outside Scandinavia. ’The Killing’ and ’Borgen’ have both been a part of this development – and to us, it seems to be a natural next step to create this new screenwriter–based company, founded on the ambition of creating new stories to a large audience both in Denmark and abroad. The Nordic stories in many differentgenres, have been noticed around the world. We need to retain and invest in this position; with SAM we want to collaborate with some of the strongest talent in the Nordic countries. We want to create the best conditions and a unique creative environment, so that we keep getting better at telling relevant and powerful stories.” 

Meta Louise Foldager explained: ”In Scandinavia, we have a huge pool of extremely strong writing and directing talents, who have told striking stories in movies and TV-series, successfully distributed worldwide. In order to facilitate and nurse this very fortunate talent situation, we need to finance, collaborate and distribute internationally. SAM has the ambition, structure and a group of owners that in my view, make a solid platform for doing so”.

Last week, StudioCanal announced that it is working with Nordisk on Danish director Tobias Lindholm’s A War.