So, word is, Norway's all time most popular film was an animated feature called Pinchcliffe Grand Prix back in 1975. It sold more tickets than the estimated population of Norway - 5.5 million tickets to 4.9 million in population - and played every day in a cinema somewhere for 28 years. 28 years! And now, 36 years later, someone is finally getting around to making a follow up to it called Solan and Ludvig: Christmas in Pinchcliffe aiming for a November 1, 2013 release. Which is an awful long ways away but the film is going to be made in the traditional stop motion animation style like the original and these things take time you know.
The film will be the come-back of Solan (an optimistic and cheerful magpie), Ludvig (a pessimistic and melancholic hedgehog) and their friend, the inventor Reodor Felgen.Ready for new adventures around Christmas-time, they are eagerly waiting for the snow, and Felgen, comes up with the world's largest snow canon, which falls into the wrong hands.Both films were and are influenced by the universe of Norwegian author and cartoonist Kjell Aukrust Alvdal. "However, except for some of the characters the new film has nothing to do with Caprino's; our point of origin is Aukrust's original story and his illustrations from the 1950s," explained Cornelia Boysen, of Norwegian production outfit Maipo, staging the €3.2 million movie.
Directing the film is Rasmus A Sivertsen whose work we here at ScreenAnarchy last saw in an animation segment in the Norwegian sex comedy Fatso. It is unlikely that the content of this new film is going to be the same as that. I've included an couple excerpts from the original film to give you an idea of character and their charm.