The US arthouse specialist hopes to emulate the success it had with previous Swedish box office hits and literary adaptations, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The 100 Year-old Man Who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared. 

The film directed by Hannes Holm has sold more than 1.6 million tickets in Sweden, making it the 5th best-selling local film to date on home turf.
 
Three questions to Edward Arentz, Music Box Films Managing Director.:

How successful exactly were The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The 100 Year-old Man Who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared in the US across theatrical and ancillary rights?
Edward Arentz: With $12.8 million in North American box office, The Girl wit the Dragon Tattoo was one of the most successful foreign language releases in the last decade. The 100-Year Old Man grossed a little less than $1 million. We don’t provide home entertainment data but we are happy to report that both titles have performed at even higher proportionate levels in home entertainment than their results in the theatrical segment of the release.

When and how do you intend to release A Man Called Ove in the US?
EA:
We anticipate releasing A Man Called Ove, as we release most of our films, first with a traditional 90-120 day theatrical window, followed by transactional video on demand (VOD) concurrent with DVD/Blu-ray and finally subscriber video on demand (SVOD) a further 60 days later.  Our SVOD partner is Amazon prime.

Ove is tentatively slated to open in late summer/early fall and we will heavily promote the film around the US and Canadian popularity of the source novel. The release will target an older literate demographic that makes up the core audience in the so-called “arthouse” segment.


How is the US market these days for foreign language films and what are the essential elements to recoup your investment?

EA: The market in the US still is a challenge for non-English language arthouse films as distinct from the Hindi, Chinese, Korean or Spanish language films primarily servicing recent immigrant ethnic-American audiences. 

However a viable market remains for accomplished foreign language films that are curated for US interests and tastes, strategically marketed and carefully released. The emergence of SVOD platforms with a much broader bandwidth for content than traditional linear TV, particularly content that has demonstrated its appeal in theatrical release, continues to foster the US market for non-English language productions. 

The essential elements of a successful release still revolve around positive, motivational press coverage although working with a film adapted from a popular book is a time-tested means of insuring audience awareness/interest.“