EXCLUSIVE: Iceland‘s manufacturing companies previous has pushed a artistic improvement flurry, in keeping with key native trade figures resembling Severance star Ólafur Darri Ólafsson.
Primarily recognized in leisure for housing big-budget U.S. productions resembling HBO’s True Detective: Evening Nation and Christopher Nolan sci-fi Interstellar, Iceland has emerged out of the shadows of its previous as a automobile commercials location to turn out to be a major participant in European TV co-productions. On the similar time, its home sector has equally grown with native networks and streamers shopping for and the likes of Netflix and CBS Studios investing.
Ólafsson, the Icelandic-American actor and producer who starred in Baltasar Kormákur’s collection Trapped and Apple TV+ drama Severance, stated abroad productions and the nation’s favorable tax break have performed a significant function within the scenario. He has simply filmed Collection Mania competitors contender Reykjavik Fusion, a crime-meets-cookery drama collection, for his manufacturing home ACT4, France’s Arte and U.S. co-producer Wild Sheep Content material.
“We shot it for round €900,000 [$1M] an episode, which to everybody exterior Iceland feels ridiculously low,” stated Ólafsson. “Coming from Iceland, you must make sources go far, however we’re fortunate that we’ve had a mixture of big-budget American and worldwide productions come right here, which has educated and created these actually unimaginable crews. It additionally means we’ve tools that most likely wouldn’t be right here if we didn’t have these large productions.”
Ólafsson added that Iceland and the U.S. had loved a “good symbiotic relationship,” with American demand resulting in the event of native manufacturing infrastructure that’s now driving native improvement and aiding higher scripting. “In different international locations, it hasn’t,” he stated. “In Canada or the UK, it takes over and also you’re simply doing American initiatives or you’ll be able to’t compete with the cash.”
We spoke to a number of producers with related views for this text. Andri Omarsson, CEO of Icelandic producer Glassriver, was one. He stated: “All through the ears we’ve been lucky to have the nice foundations from the manufacturing companies – we’ve all of the infrastructure as a result of we’ve been serving Hollywood since James Bond got here right here in 1984 [for A View to a Kill]. We are able to now take that data and use it for Icelandic content material.”
James Bond function ‘A View to a Kill’ filmed in Iceland in 1984
United Artists/courtesy Everett Assortment
Glassriver has emerged as a significant native producer since its co-founders made true-crime drama Case for Netflix in 2014, and is likely one of the few corporations that also doesn’t double as a manufacturing companies agency or maker of commercials and unscripted.
The agency is behind the likes of As Lengthy As We Dwell, starring Mr Robotic‘s Martin Wallström and bought internationally by Eccho Rights, and thriller Black Sands, co-produced with a number of European companions. In latest months, we’ve revealed it’s making exhibits resembling Reykjavik Noir for streamer Síminn, a collection adaptation of Lilja Sigurdardottir‘s crime novel trilogy, and Manifesto, a thriller primarily based on Iceland’s first-ever real-life terrorist assault that has France-based distributor Wild Bunch TV on board. Elsewhere, capturing has wrapped on wrapped manufacturing on its coproduction with Portugal’s SPi, Chilly Haven. It’s also making Masquerade with will co-produce scripted collection Masquerade with Severance government producer Nicholas Weinstock and his Invention Studios, and worldwide co-pro specialist Marc Lorber’s The Artwork of Coproduction.
“After The Case, which was the primary to get an MG from a world distributor, we noticed that there was a path ahead for Icelandic content material to get worldwide financing,” stated Omarsson. “With that mindset, we based Glassriver with the only real function of constructing internationally-financed Icelandic content material that travels.”
Glassriver’s co-founders made Netflix drama ‘Case’
Netflix
Tax break affect
An Olsberg SPI report commissioned by Iceland’s Ministry of Tradition and Enterprise Affairs in 2024 confirmed that the nation’s display trade had turn out to be a “main success story” due to productions resembling Lamb and Beast, with main worldwide initiatives resembling True Detective: Evening Nation, The Northman and Interstellar all capturing within the nation.
Having assessed the 2019-2022 interval, the report famous there had been a “regular upward trending progress” within the variety of initiatives benefiting from the Iceland Movie Manufacturing Incentive, which offers TV exhibits and movies with a 35% rebate for manufacturing that spend at the least ISK350M ($2.75M) within the nation. The overall worth distributed was “cut up equally” between home and international productions. Given the increase in improvement and Iceland-led co-pros, it wouldn’t be stunning to see this tip in favor of native developments.
Kristinn Þórðarson, SVP of Movie and TV at producer and companies supplier Truenorth, was Chairman of Icelandic producers physique SIK when the tax rebate was elevated from 25% to 35% in 2022. “Since then, most of the TV collection which can be produced in Iceland haven’t relied on help from the movie fund, which has been starved of funding for years,” he stated.
“The 35% tax rebate has definitely made an enormous change, as we predicted after we obtained the the change by means of. With that, and with the license charge from a TV station, you have got virtually 50% of the funding secured from Iceland.” This primarily pertains to five-to-six-episode scripted collection with budgets of round €5M-€6M.
Since Þórðarson joined Truenorth ten years in the past to push it past manufacturing companies and into originals, the corporate has made exhibits resembling RÚV authentic The Valhalla Murders, which bought to the BBC amongst others, and SkyShowtime’s drama The Darkness with CBS Studios Worldwide, now a significant investor in Icelandic co-pros.
“We made The Darkness in English although we used largely Icelandic actors, and that allowed us to double our finances as a result of CBS Worldwide was keen to pay for an English-speaking present,” stated Þórðarson. “That’s one approach to make the exhibits with greater budgets, but when we maintain in Icelandic then we’ve a glass ceiling.”
Subsequent up for Truenorth is Dying on the Island (aka Diplomat Dies), co-produced with Canada’s Blink49 Studios and primarily based on a ebook from Icelandic former First Girl Elize Reed, which we informed you about first in April. Reykjavik: A Crime Story, in the meantime, is predicated on a ebook from The Darkness scribe Ragnar Jónasson and former Icelandic Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdóttir. It’s being produced for Síminn with Dimma Footage, a brand new automobile from Jónasson and former Stampede Ventures worldwide chief Jean-Paul Sarni that we revealed final week.
L-R: Ragnar Jónasson, Anna Friel and John-Paul Sarni
Tatiana Hallgrimsdotti
The truth that Marcella star Anna Friel is starring in and exec producing one other upcoming Dimma present, restricted collection The Woman Who Died, is one other instance of that worldwide cash coming into the Icelandic system.
After all, the problem for each native manufacturing sector is to stability the combination of English-language content material demanded by worldwide buyers with a wholesome quantity of scripted programming shot within the native language and reflecting native tradition and values. Ólafsson has excessive expectations Iceland can obtain that.
“We converse a language solely 400,000 folks converse, however folks appear to be concerned with tales from Iceland, which is extremely worthwhile, and there’s no higher method of holding a language alive than to report folks talking it,” he stated. “We’ve had a whole lot of goodwill from throughout Europe, and Reykjavik Fusion wouldn’t exist with out Arte and Wild Sheep, a U.S.-based firm. There are co-productions available.”
