19/01/2016 - Tomas Alfredson’s Jo Nesbø adaptation will film on location in Norway with a 160-strong crew and 1,700 local extras until early March

Actors Michael Fassbender and Rebecca Ferguson

Five years after his latest feature – the John le Carré adaptation Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile], which was nominated for three Oscars and won a BAFTA – Swedish director Tomas Alfredson started principal photography yesterday (18 January) for The Snowman [+see also:
trailer
film profile] on location in Oslo. 

One of the early arrivals for the production was German-Irish actor Michael Fassbender (read the news), who has just been Oscar-nominated for British director Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs [+see also:
film review
trailer
making of
film profile]; here, he plays the lead as anti-authority, anti-sobriety detective Harry Hole. The cast also includes Swedish actress Rebecca Ferguson and French actress Charlotte Gainsbourg.

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Scripted by US screenwriter Matthew Michael Carnahan, and produced by the UK’s Working Title and Hollywood’s Universal Pictures, The Snowman will shoot in Oslo, Bergen and Rjukan (in the Telemark region) until early March, as the first feature project to benefit from the 25% rebate incentive for international film and TV series shot in Norway. A 160-strong crew (including 100 Norwegians) and 1,700 local extras are involved.

Among the locations the production has scheduled are Oslo’s Holmenkollen ski recreation area, Hole’s favourite café at Restaurant Schrøder in St Hanshaugen and Telemark’s Notodden Airport. The municipality of Oslo has supported the efforts to land the production to the tune of €160,000, while other funds have contributed €84,000.

In the seventh of Norwegian author Jo Nesbø’s Hole thrillers, the detective is searching for a missing woman – the only trace left of her is her pink scarf, worn by a snowman in the yard. He finds out that over the last decade, 11 women have vanished on the day of the first snow – then he receives an anonymous letter signed “The Snowman”. The film will have its world premiere on 13 October 2017.