‘The Imitation Game’ Director Morten Tyldum Plans U.S. Remake of ‘Headhunters’

Before he earned an Oscar nomination for directing The Imitation Game, Morten Tyldum initially drew notice for his (arguably more interesting and much better) Norwegian film Headhunters. The exceedingly dark comedy starring Game of Thrones’ Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and The Martian’s Aksel Hennie was Tyldum’s breakthrough to U.S. audiences, and it looks like he’s revisiting his foreign language hit with an english language remake.

Deadline reports that Tyldum is working with original Headhunters producer Yellow Bird (the studio behind The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo) to develop a U.S. remake of his dark Norwegian crime comedy, which was a hit on the festival circuit and earned the director enough notice to put him at the helm of The Imitation Game.

Based on Jo Nesbo’s novel of the same name, the original Headhunters centers on Roger (Hennie), a corporate recruiter whose dissatisfaction with his own success drives him to moonlight as an art thief to afford a more luxurious lifestyle. When he discovers that a potential business prospect (Coster-Waldau) owns a rare and expensive painting, Roger sets out to steal it, setting off an increasingly violent chain of mishaps that would make the Coen brothers proud.

A Headhunters TV series was in the works at HBO back in 2013, but the project stalled out in the early stages. Tyldum is considering either a movie or a television miniseries for the U.S. remake, though a decision has yet to be reached on the format.

Tyldum’s next project is Passengers, a sci-fi film based on a Black List screenplay by Jon Spaihts, with Jennifer Lawrence, Chris Pratt and Michael Sheen.