Directors Joe and Anthony Russo are expanding the cast of the film adaptation of Simon Stålenhag’s The Electric State, their next film for Netflix, with Giancarlo Esposito (The Mandalorian) and Ke Huy Quan (Everything Everywhere All at Once). Anthony Mackie (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) and Billy Bob Thornton (The Gray Man) have also signed on in voice roles.

Set in an alternative America in the mid-1990s, The Electric State stars Millie Bobby Brown as a young girl traveling across the country in the wake of a civil war between humanity and the robots that once served them, looking to find her missing brother. Chris Pratt costars as a smuggler she meets along the way; Stanley Tucci and Jason Alexander round out the cast.

Esposito will play an antagonist known as the Marshall, a robotic drone manned by Esposito’s character remotely and tasked with hunting down the robot aiding Brown’s character on her quest. (The drone is played on set by a performance-capture actor; Esposito will shoot his side later in production.) Quan will play a doctor that Brown’s character needs to find; he’s taking over the role from his Everything Everywhere All at Once costar Michelle Yeoh, who had to depart the film due to scheduling conflicts. Mackie and Thornton will each voice sentient robots in the film. Mackie’s character is a sidekick for Pratt’s, while Thornton voices a key figure in the civil war.

The film is currently in production in Atlanta, with an eye to debut in 2024.

Jakob Weis is one of Denmark’s most prominent and versatile writers, with a passion for exploring both different genres and mediums for storytelling.

Weis has a background as a prolific and awarded playwright with more than 30 plays to his credit since his debut in 1993. He is the only writer to have won three Reumert Awards, Denmarks biggest award for the performing arts, in the category ‘Best Dramatist’. Weis has also received the prestigious Danish Dramatics’ Honorary Award.

In 2016 Weis turned his attention to writing for film and TV series, and 2018 saw the premiere of his first feature film That Time of Year for which he was awarded ‘Best Screenplay’ at the Bodil Awards, and nominated for ‘Best Original Screenplay’ at the Robert Awards.

2019 marked the release of the acclaimed TV series Face to Face (Forhøret) of which Weis is co-creator and head-writer. Lauded by critics, Face to Face received numerous nominations at the Robert Awards and became Viaplay’s most watched original production in 2019-2020. In 2022, a British remake of the series titled Suspect aired on Channel 4 in the UK.

His latest feature film, the star-studded dramedy Fathers & Mothers (Fædre & mødre), premiered in November 2022 and had the best opening weekend of the year for a Danish film.

Weis currently has several projects in the making. Tove’s Room (Toves værelse), a character drama based on Weis’ play about author Tove Ditlevsen, will be released in June 2023. He is also writer of the sixth Department Q film Boundless (Den Grænseløse), set to premiere in February 2023.

Furthermore, Weis is writer of The Lioness (Løvinden), the upcoming biopic of Out Of Africa author Karen Blixen. Based on Tom Buk-Swienty’s recently published biography about Blixen’s life, the highly anticipated film is set to be directed by May el-Toukhy.

Viaplay will air a second season of the record-breaking Norwegian series Furia in 2023. A dark, multi-layered drama exploring the disturbing underworld of right-wing terrorism, Furia is created by International Emmy winner Gjermund Stenberg Eriksen. Actors starring are Ine Marie Wilmann, Pål Sverre Hagen and Borys Szyc.

The second season of Furia takes place two years after the first. Security police agents Ragna and Asgeir continue to battle extremist forces in Norway – but when an undercover mission goes wrong, the two are forced into a new race against time to foil a terrorist plot.

Furia season two is written by Gjermund Stenberg Eriksen, Ingar Johnsrud, Embla Veier Bugge and Mikkel Bugge, with Magnus Martens as conceptual director.

It is now official that the new series entitled Genombrottet will premiere on Netflix in 2023. The five episodes, written by Oskar Söderlund and directed by Lisa Siwe, are based on the novel Genombrottet: Så löste släktforskaren dubbelmordet i Linköping by Anna Bodin and Peter Sjölund.

Genombrottet is described as a “dramatization of an unexpected hero, an unlikely collaboration and the hunt for a killer.” At the same time it is a story about “how an unsolved crime affects a society and what happens to people who are left without answers to both ‘who?’ and ‘why?’.”

The police chief and the genealogist will be portrayed by Peter Eggers and Mattias Nordkvist. The series is produced by FLX.

Tarik Saleh’s Boy from Heaven won the prestigious NDR Film Prize at the 64th edition of the Nordic Film Days in Lübeck. The film also won the INTERFILM Church Prize, which was awarded during the closing ceremony. The film is Sweden’s Oscar entry for Best International Feature Film.

The NDR Film award is the festival’s biggest prize. Awarded annually since 1990, the prize goes to a “feature film of special artistic quality” which should “reflect society with an independent creative language and explore new perspectives regarding content and aesthetics”.

–It is a great honor to win the main prize in Lübeck and the Church prize. Our goal was always to make a film that wouldn’t be locked in time and space. It moves me deeply to be recognized for our hard work, says Tarik Saleh.

Boy from Heaven will open the Stockholm International Film Festival on Wednesday November 9, and will be released in Swedish theatres on November 18.

In Stefan Ahnhem’s highly anticipated spin-off novel, An Entirely Different Story, famous lifestyle influencer is found murdered in a suite at one of Stockholm’s finest hotels. Is it a cold staged execution, or the result of erotic play gone too far?

The former colleague of Fabian Risk, Malin Rehnberg, recovered from the events in The Ninth Grave three years prior, receives the case on her desk and is forced to fight against her new boss who wants the regional criminal police to focus on an ongoing trafficking investigation. And at the same time, family life together with Anders out in Enskede is getting increasingly unstable.

When yet another murder occurs, everything turns on its head. Is there any connection between the victims, can these cases be part of something bigger, and what does that persistent stalker who keeps appearing in the investigation actually want?