Troll 2 - Director, Writer And More Info
They say that on quiet nights you can hear the chants coming from small Norwegian villages, "More 'Troll,' more 'Troll,' MORE 'TROLL!'" Indeed, fans of the Norwegian straight-to-Netflix creature feature "Troll" have been famished for more troll-on-human violence since the film's release in 2022.
Directed by Roar Uthaug, the accomplished filmmaker behind high-intensity spectacles such as "The Wave" and 2018's "Tomb Raider" reboot, "Troll" was something of a surprise hit on the streaming platform. Back in December of 2022, "Troll" scored the second spot on Netflix's coveted Top 10 Most Watched list, right behind the smash hit series "Wednesday." For a foreign film dropped on the platform with little to no marketing, that's majorly impressive. Even moreso: "Troll" went on to become Netflix's most-watched non-English film of all time.
The critical reception of "Troll" was mixed, but fairly positive. The Los Angeles Times' Noel Murray wrote that "it's no secret why Netflix's monster movie 'Troll' is so popular," that is, because it "has a blockbuster polish without the Hollywood heaviness." Jesse Hassenger wrote in his Polygon review that "'Troll' gets right to the point [...] the special effects look good, the action is legibly captured by Uthaug's camera, and the monster has awesome destructive power." There were gripes about the film's shirking of interesting cultural context around Norwegian mountain trolls, and the low-rent Roland Emmerich vibes of the whole affair. But on the whole, "Troll" was successful enough to garner "will there be a sequel?" buzz — and to get an answer of, "yes, there will!"
When does Troll 2 premiere?
The great news is that Netflix has ordered a sequel to "Troll." Variety reported last month that the team behind "Troll," including director Roar Uthaug, writer Espen Aukan, and producers Espen Horn and Kristian Strand Sinkerud have begun work on mounting a follow-up to the cottage-smashing, mountain-leveling madness of the first film. It's actually unclear whether Aukan will be brought back, but Uthaug has signed on, and Horn and Sinkerun were reached for comment in the report, so it seems sure that their Oslo-based production company Motion Blur will be at the helm once more.
An exact premiere date has not been set for the sequel. The film is likely deep in pre-production, which is the trickiest stage of filmmaking, as it can last anywhere from a few months to several years. There are two things on the side of "Troll 2" ("Untitled Troll Sequel," "2 Troll 2 Furious" — whatever you want to call it) that should make fans optimistic. First, this is a completely Norwegian production, so it wasn't affected by the now wrapped-up WGA strike, and remains unaffected by the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike. The studios can continue to negotiate in bad faith and walk away from the table with the guild as long as they want (hopefully not much longer), and "Troll 2" can still charge forward. The second vote of confidence is that the film already has production and distribution lined up, which means financing should be a piece of cake — ergo, more troll content faster.
What are the plot details of Troll 2?
We know nothing about what will actually happen in "Troll 2: Roar Uthaug's New Trollmare." In fact, even the writer(s), director, and producers may know nothing about what will actually happen. The sequel was only officially announced last month, so there may well be a screenwriter sitting at this very moment bestride a calm and sparkling fjord staring in panic at a blank piece of paper. Knowing how filmmakers who are at the sequel-instantly-greenlit-by-Netflix level of their careers tend to work, however, I'd be surprised if Uthaug or the producers didn't have another idea already sketched out.
In the Variety sequel announcement, Horn and Sinkerund commented that "Troll 2" will be "again spinning on a Norwegian fairy tale figure, played, directed and produced by Norwegians." Sure enough. Nothing very revelatory there. But in an older interview with What's On Netflix, conducted around the time of the release of "Troll," producer Sinkerund got a little more revealing:
"As filmmakers, you always have ambitions to make something that can last a little longer than one film. Of course, we have ambitions to make a sequel and perhaps two sequels, but it all depends on how the audience are responding to 'Troll.'"
"Perhaps two sequels" is just specific enough language to make me think they didn't merely have the desire to make a sequel upon the release of "Troll," but already had ideas on paper. Plot details may be coming sooner than we might have thought.
Who is in the cast of Troll 2?
The great thing about a film like "Troll" doing good business on streamer as popular and accessible as Netflix is that it introduces viewers to a whole new world of cinematic talent. We're all familiar with the American faces who frequently grace the shimmering tiles on Netflix: Ryan Gosling, Ana De Armas, Gal Gadot ... we know them, I guess we love them. But what's even more fun than watching "The Gray Man" for the 12th time is watching a film like "Troll," falling in love with an actor, or a director, or a writer, and following their career down the rabbit hole.
The "Troll" cast was led by Ine Marie Wilmann, who played the paleontologist Nora Tidemann, brought in by the Norwegian government to investigate the property destruction and giant footprints the troll leaves behind before it first shows its face. Wilmann might be familiar to cinephiles who got turned on to the pride of Norwegian arthouse, Joachim Trier, when he released the swooning romance "The Worst Person In The World" in 2021. She played a small role in his 2006 film "Reprise," which also starred the "Worst Person" standout Anders Danielsen Lie. Nora's folklorist father (the "magic is actually real, guys" character every one of these movies needs) was played by Gard B. Eidsvold, a prolific screen actor who starred in the 2019 adaptation of the novel "Out Stealing Horses," and is the longtime muse of the director Hans Petter Moland. Kim Falck ("Kuppel 16"), Mads Sjøgård Pettersen ("Eddie The Eagle"), and Anneke von der Lippe ("Troubled Water") also starred.
Some of these characters died in "Troll," but it's entirely possible Wilmann and Eidsvold will be back for "Troll 2: Revenge of the Troll."
Who are the director and writer of Troll 2?
Roar Uthaug will be back for the next "Troll" film. If you're a fan of directors who can take on large-scale action epics at moderately-scaled budgets, and indeed make them feel intimate and personal while not skimping on any of the chaos or thrills, you need to put Uthaug on your radar. Think Paul W.S. Anderson, David Leitch, or yes, Roland Emmerich, whom I will defend until the end of time. Uthaug's filmography is actually quite interesting, because before his big international breakout came in 2015 ("The Wave," apparently Norway's "first disaster movie" about a very Norwegian disaster — a huge, ice-cold tidal wave), he'd directed a historical epic, a slasher film, a political short, and even a Christmas movie! He's a real jack of all trades, but he's lately become a master of one: the disaster film.
"The Wave" was epic and "Troll" is divine. His take on "Tomb Raider" didn't rob my jewels, but it's all the more proof that he needs to be blowing up buildings, not directing actors to infiltrate them. Uthaug is officially confirmed for the sequel to "Troll," and it's easy to see why. The film was his biggest hit by a massive margin, racking up 103,000,000 views in its first 91 days (per Variety). As I just detailed, Uthaug seems driven by the challenge of tackling new material in new genres, so perhaps "Troll 2: Infinity Troll" will mark a departure from the look and feel of the first.
The writer behind "Troll," Espen Aukan, has not yet been confirmed for the sequel. His only previous feature was a Norwegian werewolf movie called "Viking Wolf," so his fate could go either way for the next installment in the "Troll" saga.
Is Troll 2 based on a true story?
Well. The image you see above isn't "real," per se, in the sense that a giant troll did not actually raise itself up from the craggy peaks of the Scandes and start swinging on villagers. Are trolls real, though, is another question. Here at /Film we are big fans of regional horror, films like "Death Screams" (North Carolina), "The Blood on Satan's Claw" (18th century England), and "You Won't Be Alone" (19th century Macedonia), which are narratively rooted, and sometimes rooted in the produciton sense, in their specific settings.
This is the case in "Troll." There's a long history of lore surrounding mountain trolls dating back to as early as 13th-century Norse and broader Scandinavian myth and folk tales. Life in Norway notes that the linguistic variations on words for "troll" mirror the varying conceptions of the figure of the troll in local mythology: "There's much overlap in the terms jötunn (giant), troll, þurs (hostile monsters) and risi (heroic beings)." We've seen risi in media before, as in the Dreamworks film "Trolls," which is really derivative of Troll dolls, but those dolls are somewhat derivative of risi-style troll mythology! Jötunn are often depicted as friendly as well, as in "Lord of the Rings" or "Bridge to Terebithia," carrying the heroes across rivers or vast mountain ranges. More often than not, though, the type of trolls we get in media are þurs, the rock 'em sock 'em no regard for human life kind of trolls.
That's the troll of "Troll," and given the mid-credits scene of the first film, which teased further trolls, it's likely the same kind we'll get in "Troll 2: Here We Troll Again." Whenever new details do come in about the film, you can check here first.