Roar Uthaug sets sight on Troll with Motion Blur

After Norway’s first disaster movie The Wave, Uthaug is set to direct ‘Norway’s first large scale monster movie’, according to a statement from the Norwegian Film Institute which earmarked NOK 15 million (€1.48m) in production support towards the film’s NOK 60m (€5.9m) budget.

The film Troll is based on an original script by playwright/screenwriter and Norwegian Film School graduate Espen Aukan who wrote the TV series The Games and the short horror Wettlaufer’s Widow, selected at several genre festivals.

No details were revealed about the story, besides the NFI’s two-liner pitch: in the depths of Dovrefjell, something is awakened after 1000 years of hibernation. How can you stop something you believed was just in the fairy tales?

Contacted by nordicfilmandtvnews.com, Motion Blur producer Kristian Sinkerud said further announcements will follow later in the year.

SF Studios’ co-owned Motion Blur produced Espen Sandberg’s biopic Amundsen - fourth biggest Norwegian box office hit of 2019 - the survival drama The 12th Man - third biggest grossing film of 2018 - and the TV series The Oil Fund produced with Zwart Arbeid for SBS Discovery Norway/TVNorge. Motion Blur has two projects in the pipeline for Netflix:

• the psycho horror feature Cadaver produced with SF Studios, currently filming in the Czech Republic. Rising LA-based Norwegian talent Jarand Herdal is writing/directing the movie set in the aftermath of a nuclear disaster.
• the 6X45’ series Rigor Mortis which just received a filming incentive grant from the NFI.