Scandinavian producer Nordisk Film is seeking funding for a new historical drama as it focuses on coproduction partnerships in the wake of selling its stake in a Danish prodco.

In November last year, Nordisk split from producer Thomas Gammeltoft’s Fine & Mellow, which is now the Danish hub of Dutch indie Eyeworks’ drama production unit.

Nordisk is now concentrating on building coproduction partnerships, rather than investing in new prodcos, and is currently looking for partners for a historical series set in the lead-up to the First World War.

1914: Herfra vores verden går (aka From Here Our World Begins), written by Åke Sandgren and Lars K Andersen, is being developed as a miniseries or feature film.

Danish pubcaster DR, which last year was looking to back a historical drama, considered the project but in the end it lost out to a series from The Killing producer Piv Bernth called 1864, which will mark the 150th anniversary of a Danish-German battle in 2014.

Henrik Zein, general manager of Nordisk Film Productions, told C21: “We would rather own content than shares in other companies. It’s not a main aim of ours to be part of companies. We would rather pick up projects we would like to coproduce with other partners.”

Nordisk already coproduces with Swedish prodco Filmlance on the Martin Beck detective series, based on novels by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, and the Arne Dahl series, based on the books by crime writer Jan Arnald.

More than 20 Martin Beck telemovies have been produced so far, with another eight due to enter production in autumn 2012. The series has previously aired on TV4.

Meanwhile, 10 Arne Dahl features have been made, two of which aired last month on Swedish pubcaster SVT with the remaining eight to follow this autumn.