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‘Safe House’ director’s prior film coming to theaters July 27

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Earlier this week, we wrote that ‘Snabba Cash,’ the previous film from “Safe House” director Daniel Espinosa, was languishing undated at the Weinstein Co. after being acquired nearly two years ago.

On Wednesday, the Weinstein Co. said it has now dated the movie, which is based on a novel from Swedish author Jens Lapidus, and would bring it out in limited release on July 27 under the name “Easy Money” (the English translation of “Snabba Cash”).

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In an interview, Harvey Weinstein said the delay was a result of an English translation of Lapidus’ book not hitting these shores until now. The novel will come out in the U.S. in April from Random House imprint Pantheon, prompting Weinstein to release the film as well.

“We love the movie, but we needed the book to be out here,” Weinstein said, noting that the success of the novel “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” and the two Stieg Larsson books that followed powered the trio of Swedish-language movies to American art-house success.

“Easy Money,” which stars Joel Kinnaman (‘The Killing’) as a Stockholm taxi driver who becomes enmeshed in a drug-running operation, had gone to the Toronto International Film Festival in 2010 for what was presumably the first step in a commercial rollout. Then it mysteriously disappeared.

Weinstein said in the interview that he had brought the movie to that festival because he thought the book’s publication was imminent. “We were getting mixed messages on the publishing,” he said.

The company will also now be able to market “Easy Money” as the previous film from the director of “Safe House,” the Denzel Washington-Ryan Reynolds thriller that in nearly two weeks of release has become one of the highest-grossing films of 2012.

“Audiences that see ‘Safe House’ don’t necessarily go to see a Scandinavian-subtitled movie,” Weinstein said. “But we still feel the movie could do well for a foreign-language picture. It could make four or five million dollars.”

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— Steven Zeitchik

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