Series Mania has announced the lineup for its 2021 event and the selection includes world premieres of some of the most hotly anticipated international series this year, including Furia, the original crime thriller created by Gjermund Stenberg Eriksen and directed by Magnus Martens, about a police officer who goes undercover in a neo-Nazi group.

Furia is a co-production between German producers X Filme (Babylon Berlin) and Norway’s Monster Scripted (Noble).

The festival will take place in Lille, France, on August 26 – September 2.

Read more in The Hollywood Reporter by clicking “Read More” below.

Amazon Studios is teaming up with Mandeville Films to turn Antti Tuomainen’s hit novel The Rabbit Factor into a feature film starring Steve Carell.

In the adaptation of the darkly comic novel by the Finnish Tuomainen, Carell will play insurance mathematician Henri Koskinen, who knows most of life’s answers because he calculates everything down to the very last decimal. Everything changes when he suddenly loses his job, and other variables enter the fray. Henri inherits an adventure park from his brother – its peculiar employees and troubling financial problems included. Most pressing: big loans were taken from criminal elements, and the lenders are now keen to get their money back. In the adventure park, Henri also crosses paths with Laura, an artist with a checkered past. As the criminals begin to collect their debts and as Henri’s relationship with Laura deepens, he finds himself faced with situations and emotions that simply cannot be quantified on a spread sheet.

To read more in Deadline, just click the “Read more” button below.

Yellow Bird, the production company behind such hit titles as Millenium, Wallander and Bäckström, have acquired the rights to adapt Anders de la Motte & Måns Nilsson’s new whodunnit series, The Österlen Murders, for TV. The first installment in the book series, A House to Die For, was just published in Sweden.

“We wanted to create Sweden’s own Midsomer, and what better locale is there than the Österlen region. Conflicts and intrigues abound among the idyllic villages and their eccentric inhabitants. Here the readers will encounter betrayal, greed, and murder among the castles, apple trees and blooming fields of Österlen,” says Anders de la Motte.

“We are beyond pleased to work together with Yellow Bird; their film and TV productions are always of the highest quality, and they share our vision of how to make our stories and wonderful characters come to life on the screen,” says Måns Nilsson.

Five stories set in the near future.

Welcome to Rat Island and a post-pandemic America, where the upper-class elite is waiting atop a skyscraper to be evacuated while the masses fight for survival down in the streets.

In Shredder, a scientist researching eternal life has finally found a memory shredder that will help him forget everything, before it’s too late.

Cicadas tells the story of two best friends on their way to the bull races in Pamplona when they fall in love with the same girl.

The Antidote follows an estranged son with an agenda as he goes to visit his father at a snake farm in Africa.

Lastly, in the epic and vicious Black Knight, we meet a psychologist who also happens to be an assassin contracted by big business.

Simon Stålenhag’s debut title Tales from the Loop is the winner of the 2021 Kurd Lasswitz Award in the category ‘Best non-German SF work.’ The Kurd Lasswitz Award is an annual literary award for science fiction. Since its insitution 40 years ago, authors, translators, editors, publishers, graphic artists and journalists working professionally in the sci-fi genre in Germany, Austria and Switzerland have been voting on the best new releases from the previous year to decide the winning titles and authors.

The award ceremony is planned to take place during the 12th Penta-Con in Dresden, in November.