Wickie and the Strong Men (film)

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Movie
Original title Wickie and the strong men
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 2009
length 87 minutes
Age rating FSK 0
JMK 0
Rod
Director Michael Herbig
script Michael Herbig,
Alfons Biedermann
production Christian Becker
music Ralf Wengenmayr (with motifs by Karel Svoboda )
camera Gerhard Schirlo
cut Alexander Dittner
occupation
chronology

Successor  →
Wickie on a long journey

The film Vicky and the Strong Men is a live version of the animated television series of the same name, Wickie and the Strong Men , which in turn was an adaptation of the children's book of the same name by Runer Jonsson , Wickie and the Strong Men .

Michael Herbig is the director and Christian Becker is the producer with Rat Pack Filmproduktion (in co-production with herbX film and Constantin Film ). The filming took place in Munich, Walchensee (Bavaria) and Malta and lasted from August 5 to November 13, 2008. The film was released on September 9, 2009 and has been available on DVD since March 11, 2010. In 2011, the sequel Wickie auf Große Fahrt appeared , which was also based on the animated series Wickie and the Strong Men .

action

Wickie, the son of the Viking chief Halvar von Flake, is by nature highly intelligent, but fearful and hardly gives his gruff father much pleasure; only little Ylvi stands by him and values ​​his cleverness. When one day hostile Vikings raided the village and kidnapped all the children except Wickie, he secretly smuggled himself onto Halvar's dragon boat and went on an adventurous chase.

It is also Wickie who finds out that the old enemy of the village, the "terrible Sven", is behind the attack. Sven needs a child who has never lied in order to be able to find the enchanted treasure hidden there in a tower with the Horn of Töle on a remote island. Wickie is lost on a sinking ship. There the “strong men” around Halvar find a treasure chest, and in this they find the beautiful Chinese Lee Fu. Wickie also falls into the clutches of the "terrible Sven"; but he can flee again with the help of a sawfish and two seals. He tells his father about Sven's plans and develops a plan to free the other children and Ylvi. Lee Fu shows them the way to Sven's Treasure Island. Once there, the Vikings give Sven's men a good brawl, while Wickie frees the children with the help of mechanical aids he invented. The escape succeeds by making the boat fly with stunt kites and steering it back to Flake. Wickie is now the hero of the village. Lee Fu gets the treasure so that she can buy her parents free from the emperor.

The film uses elements and scenes from the animated series, but combines them into a new plot. The carefully designed props and structures match the drawn templates down to the last detail, but the viewer should not expect historical accuracy. Director Herbig appears in a supporting role as a chronicler and comments on the events as the writer for the Royal Spanish Telegraph Service with a Spanish accent.

production

The cast in August 2009
Michael Herbig with Wickie actor Jonas Hämmerle (2009)

occupation

In the casting show Bully is looking for the strong men , which started on April 15, 2008, Herbig looked for the right actors for the roles of Snorre, Gorm, Faxe, Tjure, Urobe and Elme in six programs in the ProSieben evening program and also cast them "spontaneously" Role of the terrible Sven . The jury included actors Jürgen Vogel , producer Rita Serra-Roll and Michael Bully Herbig.

Filming

Establishment of the Viking village at Walchensee (2008)
The original Viking ship "Freya" from the shooting is now lying on the Chiemsee in Bavaria .

The film was shot in the Bavaria film studios , in Malta and Gozo , in Bad Heilbrunn as well as in the Saxony Bay and with dwarfs on Lake Walchensee , in the Bad Tölz-Wolfratshausen district . Due to its charming appearance, Walchensee was used as a filming location for the series Tales of the Vikings with Christopher Lee in 1959 and for the film The Vikings with Kirk Douglas in 1958 .

Location scouts looked for a suitable location all over Europe until they discovered the bay on Lake Walchensee and decided on it. Michael Herbig said: “This is awesome here. It really looks like a Norwegian fjord and the lake has a mixture of Caribbean and ice water. We couldn't have found anything better in all of Scandinavia. ”A Viking village and other equipment were built at Walchensee for the shooting. The competition scenes were filmed in Bad Heilbrunn in August 2008.

Production costs

The costs and the budget are said to have been in the double-digit million range ( IMDb estimate, however, 8 million euros) , which is said to have made the film the most expensive German family entertainment film to date.

Reviews

The film was largely received in a friendly manner by the feature section , especially in the loyalty to the model and the careful preparation. The amateur actors in numerous supporting roles would have delivered very decent performances. Criticism met with “unnecessary secondary characters” and the anachronistic allusions and jokes that are typical of other works by the director and are only occasionally interspersed here.

"Herbig himself is completely sailing into a new genre: away from clothes and slapstick, towards well-made, loving children's films."

“A wonderful film. Because cute, fast, funny, equipped with great attention to detail and, above all, played very big by the little actors. "

“Whenever Herbig digs out his own humor brand, 'Bullyparade', the quality drops noticeably ... All those who are supposed to push the film with their bare names on the poster and therefore have won a supporting role, pull the audience with their cameos repeatedly out of the adventure story unnecessarily. "

Box office success

Michael Herbig at the premiere of Wickie and the Strong Men with a wax figure

On the first two days the film was seen by over 250,000 visitors in Germany, after the first weekend there were already 1.25 million cinema guests (€ 7.5 million box office income). In Austria there were over 300,000 spectators in the same period. According to Mediabiz.de , the film is said to have achieved the third best theatrical release of all German films. By September 20, the film grossed € 12.9 million in Germany. Up to September 27th, 2.75 million German cinema-goers watched Wickie and the strong men . On October 3rd during a broadcast of Wetten, dass ..? awarded the golden screen to 3 million cinema-goers within 18 weeks. By December 2009, almost 5 million viewers saw the film in German cinemas.

Awards

The German Film and Media Assessment (FBW) awarded the film the title “particularly valuable”.

DVD and Blu-ray Disc

The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc on March 11, 2010 . In addition, a premium version was produced that combines both data carrier versions and contains a bonus Blu-ray disc on which, among other things, parts of the casting can be found. In addition, a DVD was produced that contains a (unhistorical but often thought of) Viking helmet as an accessory.

Sequels

Due to the success of Wickie and the Strong Men , filming began in the second half of 2010 for a sequel entitled Wickie auf Großer Fahrt . The main characters are the same as in the first film. This film was directed by Christian Ditter , who has already made the first two suburban crocodile films with Becker as well as French for beginners . The film was shot in Bavaria (Munich, Geiselgasteig, Burghausen), Malta, Greenland and at the locations known from the first film. The film is the first German-language 3D cinema film and was produced in RealD -3D . The world premiere took place on September 26th in Munich, the German theatrical release was on September 29th, 2011.

For 2012, the production of a third part under the title Wickie and the big competition was announced. However, the plans were discarded after the death of Günther Kaufmann , who played the "Terrible Sven". Another reason was that the Wickie actor Jonas Hämmerle had outgrown his role.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Release certificate for Wickie and the strong men . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , August 2009 (PDF; test number: 119 383 K).
  2. Age rating for Wickie and the strong men . Youth Media Commission .
  3. a b Tölzer Kurier, August 29, 2008, page 4
  4. a b moviepilot: Press presentation: Wickie and the strong men show off with a double presentation
  5. IMDb: Wickie and the strong men - The arrow | Budget and box office results
  6. Tagesspiegel September 10, 2009, accessed September 13, 2009
  7. ^ Spiegel-Online, accessed September 13, 2009
  8. ^ Filmstarts.de, accessed September 13, 2009
  9. a b c WIDESCREEN VISION cinema DVD technology - Wickie and the strong men wins! - Will the Viking sequel come after the mega success? ( Memento of the original from October 25, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.widescreen-vision.de
  10. a b c mediabiz.de: Wickie and the strong men ( focus: film )
  11. Germany Box Office
  12. Constantin Film brings new 3D WICKIE to cinemas in 2011! In: Press kit Constantin Film. na.presseportal , January 13, 2010, accessed on August 4, 2010 .
  13. Wickie on a long journey. Internet Movie Database , accessed June 10, 2015 .
  14. Wickie auf Grosser Fahrt in 3D - cinema premiere ( Memento of the original from December 27, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , dvdmaniacs.de, September 28, 2011. Retrieved September 28, 2011. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.dvdmaniacs.de
  15. Film shooting in the Sachsenbacher Bay - Vikings at Walchensee. sueddeutsche.de , September 13, 2010, accessed on February 1, 2012 .