Will Scorsese's post-'Hugo' project be the serial killer pic' Snowman?'

Martin Scorsese's currently riding the critical (but not box-office) success of Hugo, which received double-digit Oscar nominations. However, with Scorsese passed up for the Directors Guild Award in favor of The Artist's Michel Hazanavicius, it looks like Hugo won't be as much of a winner as some of the director's earlier works. For his next project he may be returning to what he does best--suspense and crime.  After receiving approval by author Jo Nesbø, Scorsese will direct The Snowman, an adaptation of a Scandinavian crime novel. Interestingly, the book is the seventh in the series starring this character, unusual given that most adaptations start at number one. The anti-hero at the center of it all is Norwegian detective Harry Hole. He's a smoker and drinker, and generally only put up with by his police department because he's such a brilliant detective. The case he'll solve is also quite chilling. It involves a boy who wakes up one morning to find his mother missing and her scarf wrapped around a freshly-built snowman. It turns out this incident is just one of many, but Hole's pursuit of the case may be playing directly into the serial killer's hands.

Despite having virtually no violent crime, Scandinavia has been a hotbed for thrilling books, movies, and television shows, perhaps to replace all that drama its people aren't getting in real life. The media that has crossed over to the U.S. includes The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Sweden), "The Killing," (Denmark/Sweden), Let the Right One in (Sweden), and, loosely, Reykjavik-Rotterdam (Iceland), just remade as Contraband and currently in theatres. Another adaptation of Nesbø's work, Headhunters, has become one of the most successful Norwegian films of all time. The material and movement Scorsese's working with must be good.

Matthew Michael Carnahan (World War Z) is scripting the Working Title production. Scorsese has seven directing projects listed on his IMDB page, so there's no word on whether or not it will be his next project. I doubt Scorsese will set a date for anything until after the Oscars at the end of February.