German director Caroline Link, who won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2003 for Nowhere In Africa (Nirgendwo in Afrika), is now attached as director for a new film version of the children’s classic Heidi.
Reto Schaerli of Zurich-based Zodiac Pictures Ltd. confirmed to Screen during this week’s Locarno Film Festival that this latest adaptation of Johanna Spyri’s book will be co-produced with Germany’s Claussen+Wöbke+Putz Filmproduktion (CWP) who had produced Link’s debut feature Beyond Silence (Jenseits der Stille). That film went on to pick up an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language film in 1998.
Heidi is set to be part of a planned long-term collaboration between CWP and Zodiac Pictures’ Schaerli and Lukas Hobi.
The two companies first worked together on Alain Gsponer’s live-action adaptation of Otfried Preussler’s children’s classic The Little Ghost which wrapped production earlier this week after seven weeks of shooting in Wernigerode, Quedlinburg and Munich.
The Little Ghost will be released by Universum Filmverleih in German cinemas in October 2013 to coincide with the 90th birthday of Otfried Preussler.
The Heidi story has been brought to the small and big screen in feature films, TV movies and series on more than 20 occasions in the past.
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