Universal looking to replace Martin Scorsese on The Snowmen due to his busy schedule

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

The Winter of 2011 was the last time that we had anything to say on Martin Scorsese adapting Jo Nesbo’s THE SNOWMAN. Now it seems that due to his busy schedule that Universal is already out looking for another helmer to take on the project.

Scorsese has put the project on hold, and the studio is rather impatient to get the ball rolling. Norwegian paper Afterposten reported the news, and even spoke with two directors who had been considered but wound up turning the opportunity down: Baltasar Kormakur (CONTRABAND) and Morten Tyldum (who directed an adaptation of Nesbø’s “Headhunters”).

Kormakur said, “I do not think that Scorsese is going to make this movie.” Tyldum said no because he had four or five other possible projects in the pipeline.

In author Nesbo’s contract, he has final say in who becomes the director– Scorsese was his first choice. But unfortunately he may not get it since the studio is not willing to wait around. Nesbo said this, “They are impatient and see that it can take time to wait for Scorsese. What happens now, is probably most shows that Universal wants to show us some options.” However, he still remains optimistic that Scorsese will find the time, “We hoped, and still hope, that we could cut into the queue.”

The story is the seventh in the “Harry Hole” series: Oslo in November. The first snow of the season has fallen. A boy named Jonas wakes in the night to find his mother gone. Out his window, in the cold moonlight, he sees the snowman that inexplicably appeared in the yard earlier in the day. Around its neck is his mother’s pink scarf. Hole suspects a link between a menacing letter he’s received and the disappearance of Jonas’s mother—and of perhaps a dozen other women, all of whom went missing on the day of a first snowfall. As his investigation deepens, something else emerges: he is becoming a pawn in an increasingly terrifying game whose rules are devised—and constantly revised—by the killer.

Universal would not comment, but as far as we know the film is still set to continue on track.