Prime Video and the Nordic distributor Scanbox Entertainment are developing a slate of cinema films and streaming series based on Jan Guillou’s Hamilton novels, about the Swedish intelligence officer Carl Hamilton, the companies said in statements published by Variety on Monday. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Dramanation, Scanbox’s Swedish production arm, will produce with Odeon Fiction, the German drama label of the Paris-based group Mediawan. A new actor will take the lead. The project is in active development, with casting, directors and other key creative attachments expected in the coming months.
The partnership puts a regional theatrical distributor and a global streamer behind a home-grown brand with a record at the Swedish box office: the last Hamilton cinema film was the country’s most-watched local release of 2012.
Key facts
- Partners: Prime Video and Scanbox Entertainment, part of the European distribution group Vuelta
- Producers: Dramanation (Scanbox) and Odeon Fiction (Mediawan)
- Format: feature films for cinema release and series for streaming; number, budget and dates not disclosed
- Source material: Guillou’s Hamilton novels, which have sold more than 10 million copies, according to the companies
- Last cinema outing: Hamilton – I nationens intresse, Sweden’s most-watched local film of 2012 with 512,661 admissions, Swedish Film Institute figures show
The deal
Variety describes the arrangement as pairing Scanbox’s theatrical distribution business with Prime Video’s streaming reach, and Scanbox’s chief executive, Thor Sigurjonsson, said it would give the story “the scale it deserves, in cinemas and on screen at home”. The companies have not said which territories each partner holds, whether the films will move to Prime Video after their cinema run, or how many films and series are planned.
Patrick Nebout, whose credits include the earlier series Agent Hamilton, with Jakob Oftebro in the lead, as well as Midnight Sun and Whiskey on the Rocks, will executive produce for Dramanation. Britta Meyermann (Spy City, Deadwind) does the same for Odeon Fiction. Brad Morley, Prime Video’s head of content acquisitions for the Nordics, and Scanbox’s Annica Bellander Rune and Torben Thorup Jørgensen are also executive producers.
Sigurjonsson called Hamilton “a fixture of Nordic popular culture for decades” and said Scanbox believed “the time is right to introduce him to a new audience”. Nebout said the character was more than “a man-with-a-gun concept”, with “depth, nuances and political awareness” that the new versions would draw from the books.
The franchise on screen
Carl Hamilton, a Swedish officer trained with the US Navy SEALs, has been played on screen by Stellan Skarsgård, Peter Stormare and Mikael Persbrandt. The last two cinema films show both the pull of the brand at home and its limits. Hamilton – I nationens intresse, directed by Kathrine Windfeld with Persbrandt in the lead, opened on 177 screens on 13 January 2012 and finished the year with 512,661 admissions, the most for any Swedish film in Sweden that year, according to the Swedish Film Institute’s annual figures. Its sequel, Hamilton 2 – men inte om det gäller din dotter, opened on 229 screens that September and drew 198,146 admissions, 61% fewer, by FilmBunch’s calculation from the same tables. Walt Disney released both in Sweden.
For Amazon, the deal adds a Nordic franchise to a European push that has just taken its studio arm, Amazon MGM Studios, into releasing its own films in French cinemas.
What is not known
The companies have not disclosed the budget, the number of films or episodes, the language of production, release dates or which markets outside the Nordics Prime Video will cover. Guillou’s own role, if any, was not stated.
Our reading
This is a development deal with no cast or director, so the commercial test is some way off. The shape is the news. A regional distributor carries the cinema release of a home-grown brand while a global streamer takes the series, instead of one company holding every window. Prime Video gets a Nordic franchise without having to run a theatrical operation in the region, and Scanbox, through Dramanation, moves from releasing a title of this kind to producing it.
The 2012 figures set the benchmark. A Hamilton film can lead the Swedish market, as the first Persbrandt film did, but its sequel, released eight months later, kept fewer than four in ten of those admissions. The first casting announcement, and whether the films are built for Nordic cinemas or for a wider European release, will show how far the partners expect the franchise to travel.