Hildur sells to five countries in Mipcom deals
Icelandic-Finnish detective series Hildur has five new homes.
Distributor Cineflix Rights, the company that sells the programme to broadcasters outside its home countries, has closed sales to Canal+ in France, SBS in Australia, NPO in the Netherlands, RTV in Slovenia and LTV in Latvia, Variety reported.
The deals were announced as Mipcom kicked off in Cannes. Mipcom is the annual international television market where channels, streamers and sellers meet to buy and sell the right to show programmes in their own territories. A multi-territory announcement like this means separate buyers in several countries have picked up the same series around the same time.
Hildur is a six-part series, meaning its story plays out across six episodes. It is based on the books by Finnish author Satu Rämö. More than 2 million copies of those books have sold in 30 territories.
Ebba Katrín Finnsdóttir stars as detective Hildur. The screen version was adapted by Finnish head writer Matti Laine with Icelandic co-writer Margret Örnolfsdottir. The head writer leads the scripts. The co-writer works alongside them on the Icelandic side of the story.
The series was co-produced by Take Two Studios in Finland and Sagafilm in Iceland in association with IPR.VC. That kind of co-production means companies in both countries shared the work of making it. It has already aired in Iceland on streamer Síminn and in Finland on Ruutu, the platform run by Nelonen Media.
That pattern is common for non-English-language drama. A show launches first with its local broadcasters and streamers. Then a distributor takes it to the international market for further sales, country by country. Each buyer takes the right to screen it in its own patch.
For viewers in Australia, there is already a date to note. Hildur premieres Thursday 22 October on SBS On Demand, according to SBS. Other territories have not yet announced transmission dates.
What makes this stand out is the scale of the book audience arriving ahead of the series. Two million copies across 30 territories is a large readership to travel with a six-episode debut. The next step is whether audiences in the five new countries find it in the schedule.
