While that proposed sequel to "Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy" that was briefly batted around seems to have quietly died, it looks like director Tomas Alfredson isn’t done when it comes to intrigue. He’ll soon start shooting the Jo Nesbo adaptation "The Snowman" starring Michael Fassbender and Rebecca Ferguson, and brewing in the background is another crime story, from a duo of acclaimed writers.
Scandilous reports that in a recently aired documentary on Sweden’s SVT about authors Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahloo, it’s revealed that Alfredson is working on bringing "Roseanna," the first book in the series about Detective Martin Beck, to the big screen. Apparently, this is something that has been brewing since 2012, though it seems there is a desire to keep it under wraps for now.
“Tomas Alfredson just does things that he is very enthusiastic about. Otherwise it will be not so good… I will let him work completely alone until further notice,” Sjöwall recently told Aftonbladet.
The books have previously been brought to life mostly in a number of unconnected foreign films, and the characters were developed into Swedish TV series that ran for six season. This adaptation is being done with an international audience in mind, though the aim is to keep the Swedish setting. Perhaps the version best known to stateside audiences is 1973’s "The Laughing Policeman" starring Walter Matthau, which relocated the action to San Francisco, and changed the names of the characters. Here’s the book synopsis for "Roseanna":
The masterful first novel in the Martin Beck series of mysteries by the internationally renowned crime writing duo Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, finds Beck hunting for the murderer of a lonely traveler.On a July afternoon, a young woman’s body is dredged from Sweden’s beautiful Lake Vattern. With no clues Beck begins an investigation not only to uncover a murderer but also to discover who the victim was. Three months later, all Beck knows is that her name was Roseanna and that she could have been strangled by any one of eighty-five people on a cruise. As the melancholic Beck narrows the list of suspects, he is drawn increasingly to the enigma of the victim, a free-spirited traveler with a penchant for casual sex, and to the psychopathology of a murderer with a distinctive–indeed, terrifying–sense of propriety.
A project to certainly keep an ear out for, and a promising one. Check out the trailer for "The Laughing Policeman" below.
