15/05/2014 - France’s Canal+ Group and subsidiary StudioCanal join new Danish production company to secure premium TV series content

Meta Louise Foldager is to be CEO and executive producer at SAM Productions

Danish screenwriters Søren Sveistrup and Adam Price, and producer Meta Louise Foldager, have joined forces with France’s Canal+ Group and StudioCanal to set up Copenhagen-based SAM Productions, primarily to stage television series for the international market with Nordic creative talent.

Of the three partners, Foldager will be CEO and executive producer at the new company, while Sveistrup and Price will be executive producers and create/write their own TV series.

Canal+ Group will work with SAM to develop premium content for its channels, as part of its strategy to broadcast exclusive original programming; its subsidiary, StudioCanal, will serve as the company’s distributor.

“We have already worked with Scandinavian directors – Tomas Alfredson, Susanne Bier, Tobias Lindholm – on feature films, and we have great ambitions for this venture to further strengthen our relationships with Nordic talents,” said chairman and CEO of StudioCanal Olivier Courson.

Foldager, whose production of Danish director Nikolaj Arcel’s A Royal Affair [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Mikkel Boe Følsgaard
interview: Nikolaj Arcel
film profile] (2012 – for Zentropa Entertainments) was nominated for an Oscar, has more than 20 features to her credit, including Danish director Lars von Trier’s Antichrist [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Lars von Trier
film profile] (2009) and Melancholia [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Lars von Trier
film profile] (2011).

"In Scandinavia, we have a huge pool of extremely strong writing and directing talents, and in order to facilitate and nurse this fortunate situation, we need to finance, collaborate and distribute internationally,” she added. Foldager will still be running her own production company, Meta Film, which she started in 2010.

The main writer of Danish pubcaster DR’s The Killing (2007-2013), Sveistrup has also penned such series as Nikolaj and Julie (2002-2003) and The Hotel (2000-2002). Price, who created DR’s Borgen (2010-), has published several cookbooks, owns two restaurants and is hosting a culinary TV programme with his brother.