‘The Killing,’ ‘Chernobyl’ Actors to Star in New Dark-Edged Danish Drama ‘Prisoner,’ DR Sales Boards Series (EXCLUSIVE)

Tomris Laffly During a career of 16 years that spanned numerous East Coast hospitals since the late ‘80s, real-life nurse Charles Cullen confessed to murdering at least 29 patients with a fatal cocktail of drugs he dripped into his victims’ bloodstream. That figure was only his confirmed body count, however. As a title card suggests at the end of Tobias Lindholm’s shrewd and absorbing drama “The Good Nurse” — a Netflix original that just premiered at Toronto — the real number of his victims was predicted to be as high as a blood-curdling 400. Hopping from one job to the next, the serial killer went undetected by the authorities, with his connection to the unusual deaths remaining as an open-secret suspicion at every facility he worked at. In order to avoid legal ramifications, none of the hospitals reported him — they just made him someone else’s problem, as the story of any corrupt institution goes.

Christopher Vourlias Warsaw-based New Europe Film Sales has closed a raft of deals on the animated feature film “Yuku and the Himalayan Flower,” from directors Rémi Durin and Arnaud Demuynck. The children’s animated feature, with graphics by Paul Jadoul, tells the story of Yuku, a little mouse who lives with her family in the basement of a castle and decides to embark on a quest to find the legendary Himalayan flower. The film, which premiered at the Annecy fest and played in the Locarno Kids strand of the Locarno Film Festival, is produced by Artémis Prods. (“Mandibules”) and co-produced by Vivement Lundi! (“Flee”), La Boîte Prods. (“March of the Penguins”), Les Films du Nord and Nadasdy Film. 

Marta Balaga Greece’s Homemade Films has boarded Mahdi Fleifel’s upcoming feature “Men in the Sun,” currently in the final stages of development. The story, set in Athens, will deal with masculinity, exile and loss, showing young refugees in their 20s hustling to survive in the urban pressure cooker. The company is also ready to start shooting Sofia Exarchou’s “Animal,” co-producing with Nabis Filmgroup, Ars Ltd., Digital Cube and Felony Productions. Furthermore, its founder Maria Drandaki recently presented new projects at Venice Gap-Financing Market. “Arcadia,” directed by Yorgos Zois, will see Homemade Films joining forces with Foss Production and Red Carpet. “Titanic Ocean” by Konstantina Kotzamani will be shot in Japan and Singapore in 2023.

Nicolas Winding Refn‘s upcoming Netflix series “Copenhagen Cowboy” premieres today at the Venice Film Festival, his first project in three years. It’s also his first project in his native Denmark in fifteen years.

Nicolas Winding Refn says that the characters in his upcoming Netflix series Copenhagen Cowboy, are a “female evolution” of characters from previous projects such as Valhalla Rising, Drive and Only God Forgives.

Ever the workhorse, Steven Soderbergh has made the most of the three-year overall deal he signed with HBO Max in January 2020. The director has already supplied HBO subscribers with three films, “Let Them All Talk,” “No Sudden Move,” and “Kimi,” with “Magic Mike’s Last Dance” on the way soon.

Selome Hailu Claire Danes has joined the cast of HBO Max’s upcoming limited series “Full Circle,” Variety has learned. From Steven Soderbergh and Ed Solomon, the series follows an investigation into a botched kidnapping that uncovers long-held secrets connecting multiple characters and cultures in present day New York City. Danes joins recently announced star Zazie Beetz, though character details for both remain under wraps. Danes had her breakout role in the ABC teen drama “My So-Called Life,” winning a Golden Globe in 1994 and an Emmy in 1995, before going on play Juliet in Baz Luhrmann’s Leonardo DiCaprio-led adaptation of “Romeo and Juliet” in 1996. In 2002, she starred alongside Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore in the drama film “The Hours,” and she won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for playing the title role in the TV movie “Temple Grandin” in 2010. Next, she led the Showtime drama “Homeland” as Carrie Mathison from 2011 to 2020, over the years earning two wins and three nominations at the Emmys plus two wins and one nomination at the Golden Globes. More recently, Danes played Cora Seaborne, the leading role in the 2022 Apple TV+ limited series “The Essex Serpent.” Up next, she’ll star opposite Jesse Eisenberg in the FX drama “Fleishman Is in Trouble” based on the novel of the same name.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Germany’s KiKA, France’s TF1 and Denmark’s DR Sales figure among the best-known of contenders for the 2022 Cartoon Tributes, awarded for outstanding achievement in Europe’s TV animation industry. France, followed by Spain, dominates Cartoon’s three categories of broadcaster, investor/distributor and producer of the year, which will be voted on by the about 1,000 delegates at this year’s Cartoon Forum, which takes place in Toulouse, Southern France, over Sept. 19-22. Award winners will be announced on Sept. 22.  Backed by German public broadcast giants ARD and ZDF, KiKa figures as Germany’s biggest kids connect provider. But it will face tough competition from TF1 Unité Jeunesse, the children’s  arm of giant French broadcast network TF1 whose kids slot TFOU broadcasts 70 hours of programming a year. 

Ed Meza @edmezavar France TV Distribution is ratcheting up global sales for the hit Gallic crime series “Bright Minds,” with deals ranging from Japan to the U.S., Canada and Latin America. In its third season, the show, which airs on France 2, follows a police detective who finds a brilliant partner in a young autistic woman with encyclopedic knowledge of criminal investigations who works in the police records bureau. Together, they realize their complementary skills are the key to solving cases. France TV Distribution, which is presenting its current lineup this week at the Unifrance Rendez-Vous market in Biarritz, sold the show to Japanese public broadcaster NHK, which has been airing it since July.

Netflix has released a trailer for director Nicolas Winding Refn’s upcoming series Copenhagen Cowboy – check it out below.Set to premiere at the Venice Film Festival on September 9 ahead of its release later this year, Copenhagen Cowboy is a six-part series described as a “poetic neo-noir”.The series follows enigmatic young heroine, Miu (Angela Bundalovic), who, after a lifetime of servitude, looks to enact vengeance on Copenhagen’s criminal netherworld. During her search, she encounters her nemesis Rakel, as they “embark on an odyssey through the natural and the supernatural”.Refn is best known for directing 2011’s Drive starring Ryan Gosling and 2016’s Neon Demon with Elle Fanning.

Netflix has dropped the first teaser for Nicolas Winding Refn’s upcoming six-episode series Copenhagen Cowboy which will debut at the Venice Film Festival later this week. The series marks the filmmaker’s first production in his native Denmark in 15 years. Check out the teaser above and some new stills below.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Venice Film Festival title “Music for Black Pigeons,” directed by Danish filmmakers Jørgen Leth, best known for “The Five Obstructions,” and “The Lost Leonardo” helmer Andreas Koefoed, has debuted its trailer with Variety. The documentary, which premieres on Tuesday in Venice’s Out of Competition section, explores the lives and processes of some of the world’s most renowned and prolific jazz musicians, including Jakob Bro, Bill Frisell, Lee Konitz, Paul Motian and Midori Takada. Leth, who has directed more than 40 films including landmark works such as “A Sunday in Hell” (1977) and the surrealist short “The Perfect Human” (1968), returns to Venice after his feature documentary “The Five Obstructions,” which he co-directed with Lars von Trier, screened on the Lido in 2003.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic “The Kingdom Exodus” begins with a joke, and for the next five hours, it never gets serious, not even for a second. That’s not what you might expect for the long-delayed finale to Lars von Trier’s made-for-TV horror series, though it sure makes this over-the-top return to the haunted Rigshospitalet — that big, brutalist medical center in the heart of Copenhagen — a lot more fun. For all of two minutes, von Trier tricks us into thinking that maybe this third season is going to look like a polished, peak-TV miniseries of the sort you might find on HBO or Netflix (after all, the original series came out in 1994, one year before the artifice-renouncing Danish revolution that was Dogme 95, and von Trier has since gone back to making dark fantasies with heightened style). We open on a closeup of a woman’s eye, ideally lit and steadily framed, reflecting a TV screen on which a tuxedoed von Trier appears, a quarter-century younger, over the credits of Season 2’s final episode.

Fans of Harry Styles will be able to see him live next year in a brand new tour. The As It Was singer has added extra UK and European dates to his Love On Tour in 2023.

Emily Blunt Heading To Mipcom For ‘The English’ Red Carpet Curtain Raiser

Harry Styles has extended his ‘Love On Tour’ into 2023, adding new UK and European gigs with Wet Leg – see the full list of gigs below, and find tickets here.The singer is currently on tour behind third solo album ‘Harry’s House’, and playing multi-night residencies across North America. Tonight (February 26), he plays the fourth of 15 nights at New York’s Madison Square Garden.Two new gigs (October 3 at Austin’s Moody Center and October 15 at Chicago’s United Center) have now been added to that run of dates, with new shows in Lima, Peru (November 29) and São Paulo, Brazil (December 13) also added to a subsequent South American tour.In early 2023, he will then head to Australia and New Zealand, before beginning the newly announced UK and European tour in Horsens, Denmark on May 13.Five new UK gigs have been announced for the tour, including two new dates at London’s Wembley Stadium (June 13-14), a venue Styles already played twice this summer.Support for the UK and European gigs will come from Wet Leg, with Inhaler also joining at a huge Irish show.Tickets for the new UK and European shows will go on sale on Friday, September 2 at 10am local time.

Annika Pham TrustNordisk has snapped up international sales rights to the new Danish crime thriller “Boundless,” based on fiction guru Jussi Adler-Olsen’s “Den Grænseløse,” his sixth novel in the Department Q series.   Danish helmer Ole Christian Madsen, credited for the HBO series “Banshee” (2013-16) and WWII drama “Flame & Citron” starring Mads Mikkelsen, has taken up the challenge of bringing Adler-Olsen’s suspenseful universe to the silver screens, working from a script by Jakob Weis (“The Interrogation”, “That Time of Year”). Christian Madsen will reunite with his “Banshee” actor Ulrich Thomsen (“Trom,” “Festen”). The latter reprises the role of detective Carl Mørck, which he played in Nordisk Film Production’s previous Department Q film version, “The Marco Effect”.

BBC are set to bring back the classic game show Gladiators next year. The popular game show originally aired on ITV between 1992 and 2000 and drew huge audiences in every Saturday evening.