Earlier this year, SVT Drama announced a new initiative for professional screenwriters aimed at promoting Swedish original stories in the feature film format. The interest the project has garnered has been great – 380 projects were submitted during the first half of the year, and another 153 in the autumn.

In the final round of the autumn selection, SVT Drama ended up choosing five projects. These are by the screenwriters Farima Karimi, Robin Ehlde, Maria Karlsson, Sara Nameth and Gabriela Pichler. In the spring round, six projects were selected: Sara Andersson Marmnäs, Jonatan Etzler, Marioan Hosseini and Goran Kapetanović, Cilla Jackert, Ronnie Sandahl and Sophie Vucović.

Earlier this year, Beck 39: Undercover and Beck 40: Beyond Reasonable Doubt were released on C More. They were the first two installments in a series of four new Beck films. Beck 41: Death in Samarra will premiere on New Year’s Day, and Beck 42: The Lost Son on February 5.

In Beck 41: Death in Samarra, a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize is brutally stabbed to death in central Stockholm, having presented the war tribunal in The Hague with evidence of illegal warfare. The Beck unit is under pressure to find the perpetrator behind the assassination before the Secret Service takes over. In Beck 42: The Lost Son, a jawbone is found out in the woods. The bone turns out to belong to the celebrated author Cecilia Eklund’ missing son, who disappeared five years earlier.

The two new films are written by Fredrik Agetoft and Stefan Thunberg, and directed by Lisa Ohlin.

It is now official that Universal Pictures has landed the rights to the adaptation of Simon Stålenhag’s international bestseller, The Electric State, and that Millie Bobby Brown (Stranger Things, Enola Holmes) is attached to star. Joe and Anthony Russo are on board to direct as well as to produce alongside Mike Larocca and Andy and Barbara Muschietti. The film will be written by AGBO’s Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely (Captain America: Winter Soldier, Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame).

Set in an alternative future, The Electric State tells the story of a teenage girl (Millie Bobby Brown) who realizes that a strange but sweet robot who comes to her has actually been sent by her missing brother.  She and the robot set out to find the brother in an imaginative world of humans mixing with all manner of robots, uncovering a grand conspiracy in the process.

To read more about the announcement in Deadline Hollywood, just click “Read more” below.

Sweden’s biggest online book retailer Adlibris has listed their most sold titles throughout the year, crowning Björn Natthiko Lindeblad’s I May Be Wrong as their No. 1 most sold biography of 2020.

Week 50’s (December 7-13) top placements are divided equally between Lars Kepler, Björn Natthiko Lindeblad and Stina Jackson. Lars Kepler is No. 1 in hardcover with The Mirror Man, also coming in at No. 2 in e-books. Björn Natthiko Lindeblad meanwhile occupies the No. 1 spot on the non-fiction list with I May Be Wrong, which is also No. 2 in audio. The last No. 1 spot, that of the paperback list, goes to Stina Jackson and The Last Snow.

The psychological thriller Knocking will have its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2021. The film is based on the short story Knocks by acclaimed Swedish author Johan Theorin, and the script is written by Emma Broström. Knocking is directed by Frida Kempff and is her feature debut. Kempff has previously directed the documentary Winter Buoy and shorts like Micky Bader, which among else won a Cannes Jury Prize in 2010.

Cecilia Milocco (Involuntary) stars as a woman who moves into a new apartment following a tragic accident. She soon begins to hear a disturbing knocking sound. Is it a call for help, or a message in Morse code? As the knocking grows more intense she confronts her neighbors, but they all claim to be unable to hear it.