EXCLUSIVE: A film adaptation of 2024 Swedish Book Of The Year winner ‘When The Cranes Fly South’ is in the works from B-Reel Films, the label behind Netflix hit The Helicopter Heist. The principals of the Stockholm-based indie told Deadline about plans for the movie, and about working with Lupin creator George Kay on new Netflix drama The Case.
Cranes Take Flight
‘When The Cranes Fly South’ was Lisa Ridzén’s debut novel and hot property after winning the Swedish Book Of The Year, the 2025 Swedish Bookseller’s Prize, and being shortlisted for the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize 2025. It follows Bo, an elderly man in the final act of his life and reflecting on his childhood, marriage, and relationships with family and friends.
“I cried and laughed my way through the book,” says Ulf Synnerholm, Managing Partner and Head of Drama at B-Reel. “It is about death somehow, but it’s also about warmth, and there is love, and there is the need for family, and there’s a fascination with what life could have been; all these universal questions that occupy most of us at various stages.”
Oskar Söderlund, whose previous work includes the series Snabba Cash and Greyzone is attached as writer. “It poses a challenge in terms of the narrative and we said we’d only feel secure doing it if we could find the best possible writer, someone who would handle it with care, but also bring something new to the property,” Synnerholm says.
(L-R) Managing Partners, B-Reel Films: Ulf Synnerholm, Pelle Nilsson, Johannes Ahlund, and Fredrik Heineg
B-Reel Films
On The Case
B-Reel is also working on The Case for Netflix. The upcoming five-episode Swedish crime drama from the pen of George Kay, the writer best-known for Lupin. It will star Jakob Oftebro and Peter Andersson with Kristoffer Nyholm directing.
B-Reel Films and Kay’s Observatory Pictures are making it in association with All3Media’s New Pictures, teeing up a UK-Sweden-produced show, made for a global audience.
“George, and Willow [Grylls] and Matt [Sandford] from New Pictures, came to Stockholm and we had long conversations about the project, and we also spoke about Swedish and UK culture and different ways of working,” explains Johannes Åhlund, Managing Partner at B-Reel and Creative Producer on The Case. “Then we created a writer’s room that we held partly in Stockholm and partly in London, and that had Brits and Swedes in the room.”
The resulting show drops on Netflix next year. “It is a meeting between a type of [project] that is more high-concept and higher-paced, with the twists and turns that George brings to the table, and then the more grounded, realistic, Scandi Noir crime show,” Åhlund explains.
A five-episode order is unusual for Netflix, but The Case is not intended as a one-and-done series. “We’re hoping for it to be returnable,” Åhlund says.
Keeping It Reel
On the film front, B-Reel’s movie adaptation of Andrev Walden’s bestseller ‘Jävla Karlar’ (‘Bloody Men’ in English) has wrapped. It will get a theatrical release in 2026 and ultimately land on Netflix. The company works across film and TV, and drama and documentary. Climate In Therapy, a doc about seven climate scientists in a therapy session focused on their climate anxiety, bowed at CPH:DOX festival.
It’s a broad range for a label that remains a true indie and not part of one of the large producer-distributor groups.
“We have been independent for 25 years, we are four producers and we’re all partners in the in the company and we can move very quickly and work on the projects that we love,” says Pelle Nilsson, Managing Partner and Producer at B-Reel. “Nobody else decides what we should do. We have been different sizes over the years, but we’ve always been independent, and that has helped us.”