After Stieg Larsson, author of the popular Millennium Trilogy, which has been the object of film adaptations, Liza Marklund is the second Swedish author ever to reach the number one spot on the New York Times best-seller list. She’s been the creator of the fictional character Annika Bengtzon, a female tabloid journalist as the protagonist in a big bunch of crime novels, which has also been adaptations into movies. Her novel The Postcard Killers, which was first published in January 2010, is now being adapted as a feature film entitled The Postcard Killings.
In the book, a young American couple is murdered while vacationing in Europe. The young woman’s father Jacob Kanon, a New York City police investigator travels to Europe to hunt down the murderer. Other young couples in France, Germany, Denmark and Sweden have since then been killed and the evidence points in the same direction. Kanon joins up with Scandinavian journalist Dessie Larsson (renamed Dessie Leonard in the film adaptation) to find the murderer. Kanon and Larsson must work against time since every murder is preceded by a postcard to a regional daily.
The screenplay for The Postcard Killings was written by original novel author Liza Marklund together with Andrew Stern, writer of drama thriller Disconnect (2012). Danis Tanovic, an awards-winner director known for No Man’s Land (2001), An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker (2013) and Hotel Europa (2016), is in charge of directing this USA and UK production.
After several years in development and rumors, the film adaptation for The Postcard Killings began production in March 2019. Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Famke Janssen, Naomi Battrick, Ruairi O’Connor, Cush Jumbo, Joachim Król, Eva Röse, Lukas Loughran, Steven Mackintosh, Dylan Devonald Smith, Sallie Harmsen, Orla O’Rourke, Christopher Pizzey and Tim Ahern form the multinational main cast of the film.
The movie is produced by James Patterson, creator of the popular fiction detective Alex Cross which novels have been adapted into movies Kiss the Girls (1997), Along Came a Spider (2001) and Alex Cross (2012), via James Patterson Entertainment. He also contributed to the authoring of the original novel. Good Films Collective are co-producing.
RLJE Films has acquired rights for The Postcard Killings. Mark Ward, chief acquisitions officer, stated “we’re excited to help bring this high-intensity thriller from the page to the big screen. We know James Patterson’s fans are going to love this cinematic re-telling starring Jeffrey Dean Morgan in a truly standout performance”. The movie is currently in post-production, so the release days should be announced soon.
