Nimbus plans English-language adaptations of The Pact, Worms of Carmine Street

Danish production outfit Nimbus Film, which has previously engaged in international productions such as Nicolas Winding Refn’s Valhalla Rising – has acquired two Nordic projects for English-language features with foreign partners.

One is Danish author-poet Thorkild Bjørnvig’s The Pact (Pagten/1974), about his stormy relationship with Karen Blixen (aka Isak Dinesen) [pictured], the other is Swedish writer Håkan Nesser’s thriller The Worms of Carmine Street (Maskarna på Carmine Street/2009).

”We have started discussing with UK and US companies to set up the productions for a 2013 start, with Nimbus as the delegate producer, international top-level casts and financing,” explained producer Lars Bredo Rahbek, who produced the company’s local blockbuster, Flame & Citron.

Blixen’s Babette’s Feast won Denmark an Oscar for Best Foreign-Language feature, and part of her life was depicted in US director Sydney Pollack’s Out of Africa. Back in Denmark, aged 65, she met Bjørnvig, 33 years younger, and their relationship became a sort of pact between sorcerer and apprentice.

The Worms of Carmine Street follows a European couple whose four-year-old daughter is abducted; after a 17-month police investigation with no results, they move to New York to tackle their grief and reinvent their lives. Well-known for his detective Van Veeteren series, Nesser’s work has inspired 11 films.