After the Original: Expanding Screen Universes for Old and New Audiences

Across Europe, familiar stories are returning in forms that go beyond straightforward remakes. Authors, filmmakers, and producers are reopening established worlds through new characters, expanded narratives, and changed social contexts. The advantage is clear: known stories carry recognition, emotional memory, and an existing relationship with audiences. The creative risk is equally clear: familiarity can become repetition, and loyalty to the original can leave new viewers outside the universe altogether. Presented within Spotlight on Sweden, the session brings together two distinct models of expansion. The Shadow of Guilt extends Camilla Läckberg’s Fjällbacka universe, already known through bestselling novels and earlier screen adaptations, into a contemporary television series. Absolute 100 returns to the world of Srđan Golubović’s 2001 feature more than two decades later, rebuilding a compact film as a serial narrative with new characters and contemporary stakes. Placing these cases side by side, the conversation examines how creators decide what must remain recognizable and what can be reinvented. How do literary authors, original filmmakers, commissioners, producers, and directors negotiate ownership of a fictional world? What makes an established universe durable across generations and formats? And how can known IP become a living structure rather than a shortcut to market safety?