TrueContent Entertainment Launches With Top Nordic Producers, Talent (EXCLUSIVE)

A trio of high-profile Scandinavian producers – Thomas Gammeltoft (“Terribly Happy”), Sofie Wanting Hassing (“Ida”) and Ole Søndberg (“Wallander”) – are launching TrueContent Entertainment, an ambitious independent production and distribution company based in Copenhagen.

The company is a reboot of Sweet Chili Entertainment, a digital distribution company founded by Wanting Hassing and joined by Gammeltoft in Jan. 2020 after he stepped down from the Copenhagen Film Fund, rolling off a seven-year tenure. Søndberg, an industry veteran who founded Yellow Bird and executive produced “Wallander” and the “Millennium” franchises, joined TrueContent Entertainment in 2018 as executive producer. Wanting Hassing and Gammeltoft will serve as co-CEOs.

Financially backed by independent private capital, TrueContent Entertainment will work as a talent-driven company, bringing on board top-notch creatives who will set up individual production companies to develop their own projects, ranging from films to series, including documentaries, as well as source third-party projects. These banners will be subsidiaries of TrueContent Entertainment which will invest development money into their projects and handle the back office. Talent will co-own their IPs.

Some of the writers and directors already attached to TrueContent Entertainment include Kim Fupz Aakeson whose HBO Europe series, “Welcome to Utmark,” competes for this year’s Nordisk Film & TV Prize, to be announced today at Göteborg.

Others take in Mads Brügger (“The Ambassador”), Nikolaj Scherfig (“Bron/Broen”), Ivica Zubak (“Måste gitt”), Christoffer Guldbrandsen (“The President”), Jean Baptiste Delafon (“Baron Noir”) Tony Grisoni (“How I live Now”), Sebastian Colley (“Kroymann”), Bo Lindegaard (“A Taste of Hunger”), Karen Stokkendal Poulsen (“The Agreement”), Martin Garde Abildgaard (“Tom and His Computer: Future Ruins”), among others.

TrueContent Entertainment has more than 10 projects in development. Gammeltoft said the company’s DNA was inspired by United Artists, the iconic production outfit founded in 1919 by talents Charlie Chaplin, D.W. Griffith, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks who joined forces and united in an independent company to take back control and ownership.

“We consider it essential that talents themselves co-own their work and are an integral part of the entire process of creating high-quality stories, which is why we cooperate with talents through a shared ownership of projects,” said Gammeltoft, who will be unveiling TrueContent Entertainment with his partners at a Göteborg TV Drama Vision virtual conference on Feb. 3.

The exec said he was also inspired by some workshops that he organized while at the Copenhagen Film Fund. “With all the crazy things going on in the world, we think it’s crucial that we make films that educate people to be great citizens of this world and know their culture,” said Gammeltoft. “We want to tell important and entertaining stories that stand out and stand up,” added the producer.

Projects in the pipeline include a dystopian feature with critically acclaimed Norwegian filmmaker Hans Petter Moland (“Out Stealing Horses”) on board. Gammeltoft described the project as a reversed refugee story set in a society that’s been destroyed by climate change and a civil war, forcing people to flee.