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Starbreeze has announced a partnership with award-winning director Josef Fares for a new intellectual property. Starbreeze is currently developing the first-person shooter revival of Syndicate, but was won over by a prototype presented by the Swedish director and The Story Lab. "Just minutes into Josef's presentation we knew that this was a game that we wanted to develop, and we started to work on the concept the very same day," said Starbreeze CEO Mikael Nermark. Josef Fares is an acclaimed Swedish director of films like Jalla! Jalla!, Kopps, Zozo (more)...

COLOGNE, Germany -- Kops, the police spoof from Swedish director Josef Fares, was awarded the audience prize at this year's Hamburg Film Festival, which wrapped Saturday. The follow-up to Fares' hugely successful comedy debut Jalla! Jalla!, Kops is set in the quiet, crime-free town of Hoegbotraesk. When Swedish authorities decide to shut down the local police station the small-town cops start their own mini-crime wave in order to stay in business. This year's audience prize was the first to be awarded by Hamburg newspaper the Hamburger Abendblatt. The festival's top award used to be presented by magazine TV Spielfilm. Other prizes awarded at this year's fest included the Emil prize for best children's film for Richard Ciupka's Das Geheimnisvolle Fraeulein C (The Secretive Miss C.), and the Douglas Sirk lifetime achievement award, which was presented to French star Isabelle Huppert.

Columbia Pictures and Adam Sandler's Happy Madison production company are in final negotiations with scribe Phil Wen to pen the comedy remake Kopps. Columbia and Happy Madison won a heated bidding war for the remake rights to the Swedish comedy in April. The original film centers on a small-town police force that is on the verge of being shut down because of a lack of crime in the area. Happy Madison's Sandler, Jack Giarraputo and Tom McNulty are producing along with Primal Pictures' Amanda Klein and Michael Nash. Lars Jonsson and Anna Anthony, who produced the original, are executive producing. At Columbia, the project is being overseen by co-president Doug Belgrad. Wen, a veteran TV writer-producer who has worked on such series as ABC's Spin City, Fox's Oliver Beene and ABC's 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter, made his first feature sale in April when Dimension acquired his comedy spec The Von Doozers, with Todd Phillips attached to produce. Wen is repped by UTA and Benderspink.

Columbia Pictures has won a tight bidding war for remake rights to the Swedish comedy Kopps for Adam Sandler and Jack Giarraputo's Happy Madison to produce. The race for the rights came down to Columbia and Dimension Films, which was in the mix to acquire the project for Old School helmer Todd Phillips. Other talent that circled the project included Ben Stiller, director Adam Shankman, writing team Barry Blaustein and David Sheffield and Anger Management scribe David Dorfman. Josef Fares' Kopps -- currently onscreen in Sweden and posting successful numbers -- centers on a small-town police force that is on the verge of being shut down because of a lack of crime in the area. In order to save their jobs, the local cops take matters into their own hands.