Does Kirk know his way around crime stuff? You be the judge. His directing credits include episodes of Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire, Luther, and Dexter, which sound legit to us.
Naturally, since there already is an Icelandic film version of Jar City, directed by Baltasar Kormákur, the new version is being billed as an “American remake.” This is all fresh news, so stars and such have not been determined, but we have reason to expect good things.
The 2012 Mark Wahlberg film Contraband was an “American remake” of Arnaldur Indriðason’s Reykjavik-Rotterdam and that turned out pretty well for everyone involved. And the 2000 novel Jar City (which has also been released in English as Tainted Blood) is a fast-moving police procedural that hooked the world on Icelandic crime.
Read more in this piece from the Los Angeles Times, and forgive their inevitable comparison of Jar City with that tattooed girl.
The remake is never going to be as good, but it will reach a greater audience and some of them will hopefully find the original film (also a TV series I think). Inspector Erlendur is such a brilliant character. The relationship with his daughter is particularly good (a good theme for an article: Nordic coppers and their daughters). Eva’s mother Orn is good too. So hopeless, so human
@DHoward I think the remake will be different. It really has to be. Without giving anything away…the book is so Icelandic, which is one of the things that makes it–and Arnaldur’s other books–great. Frankly, anything that leads more readers to his books is fine with me. 🙂