Jo Nesbo’s Harry Hole has been the focus of ten novels, and the seventh one is going to be made into a feature for Working Title.
Michael Fassbender is in talks to star as Hole in the adaptation, which will be directed by Tomas Alfredson and executive produced by Martin Scorsese and Nesbo himself. The idea is to create a film series centered around the badass Norwegian detective in the vein of the Alex Cross and Jack Reacher films. The first story they’re adapting, THE SNOWMAN, is actually based on the seventh novel of the series, which was published in 2007.
Hole is a detective working for the Oslo police department who, despite being incredibly intuitive and adept at weapons/tactics, is a hard-drinking, hard-smoking loose cannon. Nevertheless, he produces results, and capably navigates both his home city and the foreign locales he visits (including Sydney and Hong Kong). THE SNOWMAN centers around his efforts to determine the identity of the titular character, the first official serial killer in Norway’s history, and his relationship with his prime suspect.
Fassbender’s got a few prospective franchises going now, with central roles in both PROMETHEUS 2 and ASSASSIN’S CREED, but this would probably be something more low-key and high-brow than the spectacle of those films. While he could play a hard-boiled detective in his sleep, there seems to be enough to the character of Hole to give Fass some meat (and grit) to chew on, thus making it worth his time. Alfredson’s 2 for 2 right now, and maintained just the amount of literary dryness for TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY, so a Norway-set detective movie with Fassbender in the lead could potentially be his third home run in a row. We'll just have to see if he feels like sticking with the franchise for any successive installments, provided this one brings home enough bacon to make further go-arounds a possibility.
What do fans of the books feel about Fassbender as Harry Hole?
