Norway's Most Expensive Film Ever: Inside the Cross-Border Puzzle of 'Ibelin'
A film about a Norwegian gamer who never left his wheelchair is now the most expensive production in Norwegian cinema history — and its financing reaches across five countries.
"Ibelin", directed by Morten Tyldum — the Norwegian film-maker behind "The Imitation Game" — was held up as a case study at a French-Nordic producers' roundtable on 27 August at the New Nordic Films market in Haugesund, Norway. The panel, moderated by European Producers Club managing director Julie-Jeanne Regnault, brought together producers from France, Norway, Denmark and Iceland to talk about how films get built when the money comes from everywhere at once (Variety).
The film stars Stephen Graham, Toni Collette, Bill Nighy and Charlie Plummer, with Maisy Stewart also listed among the cast (IMDB, date unknown). It is inspired by the life of Mats Steen, a Norwegian gamer who had Duchenne muscular dystrophy and forged deep friendships through the online game "World of Warcraft" before his death in 2014. Production began in Oslo in April 2026, with Bill Nighy stepping in to replace Anthony Hopkins as cameras rolled (Deadline).
Brede Hovland of Norway's Einar Film, standing in for producer Guri Neby on the Haugesund panel, said the Norwegian shoot wrapped at the end of May after six-to-seven weeks in Oslo. Production then moved to Prague for the medieval and fantasy sequences the story demands (Variety).
Hovland called "Ibelin" "the most expensive Norwegian film ever" but declined to reveal its budget. The financing, he said, took roughly ten months to assemble and remains "mostly independent" while operating at something close to American scale. The structure spans Norway, France, the U.K., Belgium and the Czech Republic, drawing on Norwegian soft money — public funds that combine grants, equity investment and tax incentives — alongside partners including Vendôme Pictures' Philippe Rousselet and Fabrice Gianfermi on the French side.
The roundtable made clear that this kind of multi-country assembly is both the dream and the headache of European co-production. June Films producer Julie Billy said working with the Nordics has "always been paradise" for her, citing greater flexibility in Nordic financing timetables and a more advanced culture of equality and diversity within crews. "The audience in France loves Nordic cinema," she added, singling out genre film-making.
But Nadia Turincev of Easy Riders Films, drawing on her experience as a French minority co-producer on Nordic-led projects, said French development funding for minority co-productions — projects where a French company holds a smaller share — can be difficult to access. She also warned that territorial spending requirements, the rules dictating how much of a film's budget must be spent in each participating country, become increasingly complicated as more nations join the structure.
Hovland noted one advantage on the Norwegian side: majority Norwegian productions are not necessarily subject to a written obligation to spend state support domestically, though Norwegian creative participation remains part of the broader evaluation when public funds are awarded. In practice, that flexibility let "Ibelin" route its medieval and fantasy material to Prague's studios without falling foul of Norwegian funding rules.
What makes "Ibelin" stand out is the scale. A Norwegian film with a cast of this calibre, a five-country financing structure and a budget its own producer won't disclose is operating in territory that European independent cinema rarely reaches. The Haugesund case study put the mechanics on display — the ten months of deal-making, the patchwork of soft money and equity, the Prague stage replacing the Oslo streets — and the producers who sat on that panel treated it as a working blueprint, not a one-off.
