The third PETTSONS PROMISE (THE TOMTE MACHINE), featuring internationally popular TV-Loonland heroes Pettson and Findus (the grouchy old man Pettson and his curious little tomcat Findus), got off to a successful start in Scandinavian cinemas. In Sweden, the homeland of the popular cartoon characters, some 61,080 viewers have seen the new TV-Loonland feature film since its Nov. 25, 2005, premiere In its opening weekend, it placed second among top movies with a healthy edge over the third-place film (8,000 viewers) and was directly behind the most recent Harry Potter movie, HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE.
THE TOMTE MACHINE, which is based on the Christmas story, is doing well in other Scandinavian countries as well, with 47,300 viewers in Denmark, 14,400 in Norway and 8,000 in Finland. The major Finnish newspaper ILTA-SANOMAT has already praised the film as, "The best Christmas themed film for ages."
The new feature film, produced in British animation studio Telemagination by long-time partners ZDF and ZDF Enterprises, along with the Swedish animator Happy Life Animation and A Film in Denmark, had a budget of approximately 4.5 million euros. It is slated to open in German cinemas in December 2006.
The movie is based on a book by Swedish hit author Sven Nordqvist, who has long topped bestseller lists in Germany with his lovingly drawn PETTSON AND FINDUS stories, selling more than four million copies. For his achievements, the author/illustrator, born in 1946 in Helsingborg, was honored with the Swedish Literature Award, the German Youth Literature Prize and the Elsa Beskow Medal.
For the new TV-Loonland production PETTSONS PROMISE, renowned Danish directors Jorgen Lerdam and Anders Sorensen, together with the prize-winning director of the first two movies, Albert Hanan Kaminski, have transformed the picture-book story MORGEN, FINDUS, WIRDS WAS GEBEN into a 2D animated Christmas movie. The film offers extraordinarily detailed, lovingly rendered original drawings, reflective of the book illustrations.
"With our PETTSON AND FINDUS show, we created a format that has won numerous awards and that we have marketed successfully worldwide," said Selma Käppel, TV-Loonland ceo. " The first two movies with our beloved heroes had extremely successful runs. The excellent start that our PETTSON AND FINDUS Christmas movie, PETTSONS PROMISE, has made in Scandinavia gives us reason to believe that the movie will follow the success of the first two productions in Germany."
More than 1.3 million viewers saw the first PETTSON AND FINDUS feature-length film, which opened in early January of 2001. The second movie, PETTSON AND FINDUS II, had an audience of 800,000.
The second PETTSON AND FINDUS TV series (13x13) is in production and will be broadcast on ZDF.
TV-Loonland (www.loonland.com) is an integrated media company and counts among the leading international producer/distributors of animation for children, youth and families. Headquartered in Munich, TV-Loonland has its own development teams and production facilities in Continental Europe, Great Britain and the U.S., a comprehensive rights catalog as well as a worldwide operating distribution team.
