12:00 AM PST 2/26/2020
by
Scott Roxborough
Sweden’s SVT, Germany’s ARD Degeto and ITV Studios partner on a event series based on Kerstin Ekman’s award-winning crime novel.
Swedish public broadcaster SVT has teamed up with Germany’s ARD Degeto and ITV Studios in Britain on a new event series based on Blackwater, an award-winning crime novel from Swedish writer Kerstin Ekman.
Piv Bernth, the producer of international sensation The Killing, will produce Blackwater through her ITV-backed Apple Tree Productions shingle. Maren Louise Kaehne (The Bridge) will adapt Ekman’s novel for the small screen with Pernilla August (The Legacy) directing.
ARD Degeto and Sweden’s Filmpool Nord will co-produce. ITV Studios will sell the show internationally and is shopping it to buyers at this week’s Berlinale Series market in Berlin.
Blackwater has pre-sold across Scandinavia, with public broadcasters DR in Denmark, NRK in Norway, YLE in Finland and RUV in Iceland securing the show for their respective networks.
Ekman’s novel opens on a midsummer’s night in the 1970 when Annie Raft arrives with her daughter Mia in the remote Swedish village of Blackwater to join her lover Dan on a nearby commune. On her journey through the deep forest, she stumbles upon the site of a grisly double murder. Two tourists were murdered in their tent, far up in the mountains of North Sweden. The novel is told through multiple points of view.
First published in 1993, Blackwater is considered a modern-day crime classic. It has won numerous literary awards, including Sweden’s August Prize, the Nordic Council Literature Prize and the Best Swedish Crime Novel Award.
Blackwater will be Apple Tree’s second production, following Equinox, a 6-part supernatural thriller series currently shooting in Copenhagen for Netflix.
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