Banijay today announces scripted producer Filmlance has acquired the television rights from Politiken Literary Agency to the critically-acclaimed Jana Kippo trilogy from well-known Swedish author, Karin Smirnoff.

The series of best-selling novels, based on character Jana Kippo, is set to be developed into a new Swedish drama with international potential.

The producer is Anna Wallmark at Filmlance, who was behind the company’s most recent hit Top Dog, together with Teresa Alldén and Olof Spaak.

The Jana Kippo trilogy has sold more than half a million copies in Sweden and has been translated in multiple European languages, including English.

The story begins with Jana Kippo returning to her family village of Smalånger, moving into her childhood home to get Bror, her alcoholic twin brother’s life in order.  The pair have a common childhood trauma and a death in the village takes a heavy toll. Maria was found dead in a forest glade and no one knows what happened, did she commit suicide or was she murdered? The longer Jana stays in her home village, the more she gets to know about both Maria and herself.

Filmlance’s Managing Director Hanne Palmquist comments; “Karin Smirnoff is one of the most interesting Swedish authors around and we are incredibly proud to be working on what is sure to be a powerful, world-class television production. This unique story of love, betrayal, revenge and lust contains everything needed to create a gripping, exciting and constantly surprising drama.”

Karin Smirnoff (b. 1964) lives in Piteå, Sweden, and worked as a journalist before buying a wood factory. After a few years, she longed to return to writing and applied to Lund University’s writing school with what would become her debut: ‘I Went Down to My Brother’, which was nominated for the August Prize 2018 for Fiction. The second book was published in the spring of 2019, and the third book in the spring of 2020.