‘The Keeper Of Lost Causes’ Rolling In Dough At Danish Box Office: Video

Local movies are booming in Denmark this year, accounting for more than 30% of the market and outperforming Hollywood fare like Iron Man 3, Fast & Furious 6 and Despicable Me 2. The top film of the year so far is Thomas Vinterberg’s Foreign Language Oscar entry The Hunt. The Mads Mikkelsen-starrer has taken about $8M since its release in January. Other successes include Rasmus Heide’s heist comedy All For Two and family film My African Adventure. Jumping to No. 2 for the year this week is Mikkel Nørgaard‘s The Keeper Of Lost Causes (Kvinden I Buret). The film debuted on October 3rd and has now taken in about $7.7M. If it continues apace, it is expected to overtake The Hunt as the year’s top grosser. Zentropa produced Keeper Of Lost Causes, the first installment in its Department Q franchise that’s based on the best-sellling books by Jussi Adler-Olsen. It’s the first in a series of films that have been penned by A Royal Affair‘s Nikolaj Arcel. They focus on chief detective Carl Mørck who’s banished to a basement office to run a cold case division. Nikolaj Lie Kaas (Angels & Demons) and Fares Fares (Zero Dark Thirty) star. The first installment settles on the case of a well-known female politician who vanished five years ago from a passenger ferry. The only witness is her brain-damaged brother who was found on the car deck, screaming at the top of his lungs. The case was classified as an apparent suicide, but Mørck isn’t buying it and sets off with partner Assad on a journey that takes them deep below the polished surface of Scandinavia. (continued)

TrustNordisk has inked several international deals on the movie since showing a promo reel in Berlin. A U.S. deal has yet to surface, although I hear distributors are circling. TrustNordisk has sold several of its titles this year to Magnolia Pictures which picked up Lukas Moodysson’s Swedish coming-of-age tale We Are The Best!; Norwegian action adventure pic Ragnarok; Norwegian thriller Pioneer; and Lars von Trier’s sexapalooza Nymphomaniac. That film opens in Denmark on December 25th, likely bumping up local share even further. Meanwhile, Danes will be able to count on three more films in the Department Q series. Nørgaard started shooting the first sequel, The Absent One, in September.