To prepare for one of its busiest production years ever and changes in the market, NENT Group’s Monster has bolstered its business and streamlined its organisational structure by merging Monster Entertainment and Monster Scripted into the main group Monster.

The company’s CEO Ingvild Daae told www.nordicfilmandtvnews.com that this merger will allow for “greater synergies”. “We see that with our factual and scripted productions, there are great possibilities for synergies in financing models, with distributors and other producing partners. By functioning as one company, we will be able to offer our customers even stronger expertise in all genres.” She continues: “In addition to the production of great entertainment formats for Norwegian broadcasters, Monster has great ambitions for the future, both within the scripted genre and in children and factual entertainment. The possibility of telling great stories is, as always, our main focus - how the stories are distributed will be secondary.”

To fulfil the group’s ambitions, Daae has just hired seasoned producer Vegard Stenberg Eriksen as new Head of Scripted, starting January 2020. The latter will join Monster from NRK where for the last 13 years, he has contributed to some of the public broadcaster’s biggest successes such as the award-winning shows Mammon, Home Ground, and most recently, NRK’s hit financial series Exit.

Håkon Briseid, former Head of Monster Scripted, will now focus on international partners and distributors, both for scripted and non-scripted content-in his new role as Executive Producer.

Meanwhile Eva Rolland Koshamn will continue as Head of Non-Scripted. Eriksen is the fourth senior TV executive lured away from the Norwegian public broadcaster in the last couple of years with NRK’s former head of the children department Cathrine Simonsen, (Skam, ZombieLars), in charge of Monster’s children programmes since August, former NRK deputy head of drama Lasse Greve Alsos (Struggle for Life, Monster), now executive producer at Monster, and director Atle Knudsen (ZombieLars). 

Former Miso Film Norway’s managing director Brede Hovland (Acquitted, Seizure) recently joined  to help with the production of the international series What Happened in Oslo.

The production powerhouse behind Nobel, Young & Promising and Borderliner (2018 Nordisk Film & TV Fond Prize nominee), is now fully staffed to produce 3-5 scripted shows a year across all genres and formats, from smaller series financed locally, to high-end international co-productions of up to €20 million.

Briseid said that after two years of ‘intensive development’, several projects are ready to go into production. Looking ahead, Monster’s executive producer says that because of escalating production costs, his company will most probably increase its international co-productions on carefully-developed premium content, next to nationally-oriented projects.

Monster’s 2020 slate is the following:

Scripted

  • For Life (Livstid)
    Produced for NRK, with support from Nordisk Film & TV Fond. Eight-part procedural drama created by Mammon’s Gjermund S. Eriksen, directed by Pål Jackman, Bård Breien, Pia Lykke og Camilla Strøm-Henriksen. 

    The ‘Happy Noir’ is set in two timelines: in present day, as we follow investigator Victoria Woll (Eyewitness), solving cases and putting criminals behind bars, and in the future, where she sits in prison. Global distributor DRG will announce the first sales very soon. The series will premiere in the fall 2020. 
  • Blood Ride 
    Netflix Original. Six-part horror anthology series created by Kjetil Indregard (Maniac) and Atle Knudsen. Each of the six stories is set in its own realistic and weird universe. Premiere in 2020. 
  • Fury (Furia)
    Coproduced by Germany’s X-Filme for Viaplay and ZDF. Eight-part international drama created by Gjermund S. Eriksen, directed by Magnus Martens (Fear of the Walking Dead, Banshee). Fury tells of Ragna who goes undercover on the trail of a European network of right-wing extremists to prevent a terrorist attack. Her mission sends her on a journey from an idyllic town in Western Norway to the forefront of a political battle in the heart of Europe. Production will start next year.   
  • What Happened in Oslo
    Produced with Israel’s Drama Team for TV2 Norway, Netflix, HOT. Ten-part international thriller co-created by Kyrre Holm Tønne Johannessen and seasoned Israeli writer Ronit Weiss-Berkowitz. The starting point of the show is the kidnapping of a young Norwegian girl in the Sinai desert, linked to the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians in Oslo in 1993. Starts shooting early 2020. 
  • Kristiana’s Magical Tivoli Theatre (Kristianas Magiske Tivoli Theater) NRK Christmas calendar of 24x20’ episodes (12x40’ for the international) co-created by Atle Knudsen and Kjetil Indregard. Knudsen co-directs with Tonje Voreland (ZombieLars). The Christmas series follows Luka, a poor boy from Vika, a district in Oslo, who discovers all the magic and marvels of Oslo’s old Tivoli theatre. Filming is set to start in the fall 2020.

Non-Scripted

  • Estonia
    True crime in six episodes produced for Discover Networks Norway’s TVNorge. Journalist/producer Frithjof Jacobsen examines the circumstances of the sinking of the MS Estonia ferry in 1994 in the Baltic Sea, one of the worst maritime disasters of the 20th century. Premiere spring 2020.