The film director Ridley Scott is one of the most prominent film directors in history, with films like Alien, Blade Runner, Thelma & Louise and Gladiator on his resumé. Scott and the film director Scott Free have secured the film rights for Úti, a book by the author Ragnar Jónasson.
The plan is for Scott to produce a film based on the book, along with his own team and the Icelandic production company Truenorth. A Danish director has been approached for the project.
Scott was knighted by the Queen in 2003 for his contribution to British film making. He has been nominated for an Oscar three times.
Negotiations have been happening since early last fall, but the big picture seems to have been quite clear even before the book was published.
„This is a great honor, with him being one of the best film directors in history,“ Jónasson says in an interview with Freyr Gígja Gunnarsson at RÚV.
The book sparked an interest last summer when the Icelandic production company Truenorth brought it to Scott Free’s attention.
Psychological thriller
The story is set in the Icelandic highlands where four friends are forced to seek shelter in a hut. The book has been described as a psychological thriller.
„Despite the book being very Icelandic, it is first and foremost a character creation and development, where four friends are inside this hut and things start to happen…“
Ragnar Jónasson’s works are making a splash worldwide, with the television channel CBS having secured the rights to a TV-series based on the trilogy Dimma, Drungi and Mistur. The stories revolve around the police officer Hulda.
Warner Bros studios in Germany is also planning to make a TV-series based on the book series Siglufjarðarbækurnar. The first book in the series was Snjóblinda.
„This is a bit like, one project leads to another. I am just so very lucky to have these three capable groups to create something from the books. It will be exciting to see what comes first,“ Jónasson says in the interview.
This article was originally published in Icelandic by Salome Friðgeirsdóttir.