Tommy Wirkola

Tommy Wirkola is a Norwegian-born filmmaker specializing in black comic genre movies, successfully transferring from Norwegian genre cinema to mainstream Hollywood movies. Wirkola’s feature debut as director/writer/editor/co-star was the low-budget Kill Buljo (2007), a spoof of Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill (2003), earning ten times its $106,000 cost.

With his Stig Frode Henriksen (Wirkola’s regular co-screenwriter and co-star), Wirkola’s second feature was the cult hit Dead Snow (2009), about an attack by Nazi zombies in Norway, receiving its U.S. premiere at the Sundance film festival and released by IFC Films. Another cult hit—but almost purely in Norway—was his third feature, Kurt Josef Wagle and the Legend of the Fjord Witch (2010), once again starring and co-written with Henriksen.

Wirkola jumped to Hollywood studio production as writer-director of Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013), a twisted retelling of the Brothers Grimm tale starring Jeremy Renner, Gemma Arterton, Famke Janssen, and Peter Stormare, earning over $226 million worldwide. Wirkola and Henriksen cashed in on the success of Dead Snow with the sequel, Dead Snow 2: Red vs. Dead (2014), receiving its world premiere at the Sundance film festival and going on to gross a modest $1.2 million worldwide.

Tommy Wirkola served only as director and departed from the splatter black comedy genre for the dystopian sci-fi with the U.K./U.S./France/Belgium co-production released by Netflix, What Happened to Monday (2017), starring Noomi Rapace, Willem Dafoe, and Glenn Close, and premiering at the Locarno film festival. Wirkola returned to Norway and reunited with Rapace (along with co-star Aksel Hennie) for the marital black comedy, The Trip (2021), but for the first time without Henriksen as co-writer (that credit was shared by writers John Niven and Nick Ball).

A Wirkola-directed movie had its widest U.S. release to date (care of Universal Pictures) with Violent Night (2022), a twisted take on Santa Claus coming to town written by Pat Casey and Josh Miller, starring David Harbour, with John Leguizamo, Cam Gigandet, and Beverly D’Angelo. In 2022, Wirkola also served as producer on the Alex Herron-directed Norwegian horror movie, Leave, starring Ellen Dorrit Petersen.

Wirkola (as director) collaborated again with co-writers Ball and Niven (with Benedicte Westbye) on the black comedy, Deathrow-mance (date to be announced). In a departure, Wirkola was co-director (with Rasmus A. Sivertsen) and co-writer (with Geir Vegar Hoel and Jesper Sundnes) of the Norwegian animated musical about teen sex, Spermageddon (date to be announced).