Scriptwriter Services

Here is how this works in practice. We connect shoots with scriptwriters drawn from Iceland's small but unusually literary creative community, most based in Reykjavík. Our scriptwriters handle first screenplays, adaptations, episodic story development, treatments and script editing, and they work fluently in English as well as Icelandic. This suits both global co-productions and English-language projects. They know how to write to the country's locations and incentive realities — building stories that make genuine use of glacier, volcano and Highland settings rather than treating them as decoration.

Here is the short of it. Because the senior screenwriting pool is finite, for larger writers'-room or multi-language projects we set up extra writers from the UK and mainland Europe under an Iceland-based lead. We also advise producers on how qualifying Icelandic development and writing costs feed the 25% production cost reimbursement, rising to 35% for qualifying larger shoots and TV series, so script work performed in the country is planned against recoverable spend.

Here is the breakdown. Iceland's storytelling roots run deeper than almost any nation's. The medieval Sagas of Icelanders, written down from a Norse settlement that started around 874 AD, stay widely read because the Icelandic language has been preserved close to Old Norse. Icelanders still read the sagas in something close to the first. Reykjavík is a UNESCO City of Literature. A population of roughly 390,000 sustains a great publishing and screen culture.

Here is what that looks like on the ground. Today's directors who are also writers. Baltasar Kormákur, Hlynur Pálmason ('Godland'), Benedikt Erlingsson ('Woman at War'), Grímur Hákonarson ('Rams') — have carried that custom to Cannes and beyond, and folklore of the huldufólk, the 'hidden people', still informs Icelandic narrative. A scriptwriter steeped in this heritage brings real voice and structural craft to projects shooting in the country.