Copenhagen-based REinvent Studios has just picked up the high-end crime series (still untitled) currently in development, and will be looking for co-financiers at the upcoming MIPTV in Cannes.

The Oxen book franchise Hangdogs, The Dark Men and The Frozen Flames published in Denmark between 2012-2016, features war veteran and elite soldier Niels Oxen, brought back from retirement to investigate a series of mysterious murder cases, with side-kick agent Margrethe Franck. The book trilogy will be turned into two seasons of eight episodes by top Danish writing couple Mai Brostrøm and Peter Thorsboe (Modus, The Team, The Eagle). SF Studios Denmark’s Senia Dremstrup is producing.

“Ever since SF Studios acquired the rights to The Oxen books, it has been our wish to have Mai Brostrøm and Peter Thorsboe as creators, and we are thrilled that they have accepted,” said Dremstrup. “Jens Henrik Jensen has written fantastic novels with very interesting characters and an unusual set-up. Novels of this calibre require strong forces to be lifted from book to TV format. Mai Brostrøm and Peter Thorsboe are the perfect choice. The genre is known to them and they are innovative and ambitious in their approach to the material.”

Brostrøm and Thorsboe said “The Oxen trilogy has it all: the great narrative of the returned soldier, the forgotten war hero who lives on the bottom of society, but because of his sense of justice, is forced back into life-threatening battles with dark forces of power. This is a compelling and exciting story that puts us in the company of Jens Henrik Jensen’s complex and nuanced portrait of a PTSD war veteran.”

REinvent Studios’ Sales and Marketing Director Helene Aurø added: “With the internationally acclaimed screenwriters Mai Brostrøm-Peter Thorsboe, SF Studios on board, and the Oxen books that have sold well in several countries, I expect great international interest.”

REinvent Studios’ MIP TV slate also includes the crime series Trom set in the Faroe Islands, the international Finnish drama The Peacemaker directed by AJ Annila, the Icelandic series Happily Never After created by Nanna Kristín Magnúsdóttir, friendship comedy drama Ordinary People, and season 2 of the hit Danish period drama The New Nurses.