22/04/2014 - Baltasar Kormákur’s new production company, RKV Studios, is preparing Iceland’s most expensive television series so far

Currently working on Everest [+see also:
film review
trailer
making of
film profile], starring Robin Wright, Jake Gyllenhaal and Josh Brolin, following his US outing 2 Guns, in which he directed Mark Wahlberg, Icelandic director-producer Baltasar Kormákur will return to Iceland for Trapped, the country’s most expensive television series to date.

From Kormákur’s own idea, Sigurjón Kjartansson and Clive Bradley scripted the mystery thriller set on a ferry carrying 300 passengers from Denmark, trapped in the port of a small town during a snowstorm. A mutilated and dismembered body washes up on the shore; the local chief of police realises a killer is on the loose, and order then disintegrates into chaos as the ferry passengers and residents of the town realise they could be next.

Kormákur will direct the first of the 10x58-minute episodes – his first Icelandic project since The Deep [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] (2012), which won 11 Eddas (Iceland’s national film prize); his then production company, Blueeyes Productions, has expanded into TV production and become RKV Studios, which will stage the new venture.

American-Icelandic actor Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, who was in Kormákur’s US crime action title Contraband [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2012), will play the lead as the police inspector, and besides Kormákur, Icelandic directors Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurdsson (Either Way [+see also:
trailer
interview: Hafstein Gunnar Sigurdsson
interview: Hilmar Gudjônsson - Shootin…
film profile]) and Árni Ólafur Ásgeirsson (Undercurrent) will helm the serial.

RKV chief Magnús Vidar Sigurdsson will produce Trapped, with Dynamic Television’s Daniel March and Klaus Zimmermann as executive producers. Commissioned by Icelandic pubcaster RUV, it will be distributed worldwide by Dynamic, which launched it at the recent MIPTV market in Cannes.