Sony reportedly paid $60 million to remake this Swedish comedy

A Man Called Ove opened in Sweden on 25 December 2015. It was written and directed by Hannes Holm, a Swedish filmmaker whose earlier films include the comedies Klassfesten and The Anderssons in Greece, and it became one of the most-watched Swedish films ever. Sony Pictures later reportedly paid $60 million for the rights to remake it in English with Tom Hanks, a record at the European Film Market, where films are sold to distributors.

The story is simple to say. Ove is a curmudgeonly widower who misses his late wife, Sonja, and wants to die. A young immigrant family moves in next door and keeps pulling him back into daily life. Rolf Lassgard, an actor known to Swedish viewers from the crime series Wallander, plays Ove. The film reached the United States on 30 September 2016, released by Music Box Films.

It is a film about grief that is also a comedy, which is a big part of why it travelled. A story that began as a Swedish man's complaints about the modern world ended up as a Hollywood project.

How did a blog become a novel?

Fredrik Backman, the Swedish writer behind the book, began with a blog. He wrote under the heading "I Am a Man Called Ove" about his own pet peeves, then realised the voice could carry a fictional character. En man som heter Ove was his debut novel, published in Sweden by Forum on 27 August 2012.

The English edition came from Atria Books in July 2014 with a first printing of 6,600 copies, according to Publishers Weekly, a modest bet. By December 2016 it had passed one million copies in print in the United States after 43 printings. Screen Daily says it has been translated into more than 40 languages. The film arrived into an audience that already knew the character.

Why did the director say no first?

Holm usually writes his own scripts, so adapting someone else's bestseller was not his habit, and he turned the job down at first. Producer Annica Bellander gave him the novel. He read it in one night and said yes.

Casting was its own argument. Holm has said the production company did not want Lassgard because he was not so funny, and that he wanted a strong actor rather than a comic one. Screen Daily reported that Lassgard, who was playing older than he is, sat in the makeup chair for hours each morning. The film's makeup team went on to an Oscar nomination, as the next section shows.

What did it win?

In Swedish cinemas, more than 1.6 million people saw it, which made it the third most-watched Swedish film since the Swedish Film Institute began counting in 1963. At home it also took the Guldbagge, Sweden's national film award, for Best Actor, which went to Lassgard in January 2016.

Abroad it kept collecting. In December 2016 it won Best European Comedy at the European Film Awards. At the Oscars, held on 26 February 2017, it received two nominations: Best Foreign Language Film, and Best Makeup and Hairstyling for Eva von Bahr and Love Larson, the makeup artists on the film. The makeup award went to Suicide Squad.

What did Hollywood do with it?

A Man Called Otto, directed by Marc Forster, reached cinemas in December 2022. Hanks produced it and plays the lead. Sony's reported $60 million for worldwide rights topped the previous high at that market, the $55 million Netflix paid for The Pale Blue Eye, and the remake grossed about $113 million worldwide.

The remake changes the name and the country, but the plot is the same: a grumpy widower, a new family next door and a neighbourhood that will not leave him alone. The Swedish original is where all of it started.

Who is it for?

It suits viewers who liked the Hanks version and want to see the film it came from, and anyone drawn to stories about grief that still make room for jokes. It runs 116 minutes, in Swedish with subtitles.

Comedy