Director, producer and cast to reunite for at least two new films based on Jens Lapidus’ Stockholm Noir Trilogy.

Swedish director Daniel Espinosa’s $4.1m (SEK 30m) thriller, Easy Money (Snabba Cash), which The Weinstein Company has picked up for several territories including the US, will have no less than two sequels.

Espinosa will direct, and Fredrik Wikström produce for Tre Vänner Produktion. The cast headed by Joel Kinnaman and Matias Padin Varela will return in the new films, which are based on the rest of Swedish lawyer-turned-author Jens Lapidus’ StockholmNoir Trilogy, Never Fuck Up (Aldrig fucka upp) and an untitled novel still being written.

According to Wikström the decision to bring the remaining parts of trilogy to the screen was made as soon as Easy Money was ready. He told Sweden’s DN that the next two films will be shot back-to-back next year – one is set during a 24-hour-period, the other set over several decades, to become ”our Godfather.” The second film in the trilogy will open in 2012.

Whereas The Weinstein Company has acquired the film for the US (adding Germany, Italy, pan-Asian cable-TV), it is still unsettled who will land the rights for a US remake. Wikström will head for Los Angeles this weekend to negotiate the deal, and expected to have a contract signed before Cannes.

Lapidus, whose book has been published in 25 countries, used his professional experience as a defence lawyer to describe Stockholm’s underworld of organised crime. His lead character is JW, a poor student who leads a double life within the local jetset and falls in love with an upperclass girl. Maria Karlsson wrote the film.

So far Easy Money has taken 600,000 admissions domestically, as a Nordisk Film release. It opens today in Finland, Norway is next in May. TrustNordisk has also licensed the film to, among others, France (MK2), Spain (Contracorriente), Benelux (Lumiere) and Russia/CIS, Baltic Republics (Maywin Media).

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