Beowulf & Grendel is a 2005 Canadian-Icelandic fantasy adventure film directed by Sturla Gunnarsson, loosely based on the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf. It stars Gerard Butler as Beowulf, Stellan Skarsgård as Hrothgar, Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson as Grendel and Sarah Polley as the witch Selma. The screenplay was written by Andrew Rai Berzins. The soundtrack was composed by Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson.
The film was a cooperative effort among Eurasia Motion Pictures (Canada), Spice Factory (UK), and Bjolfskvida (Iceland), and it was filmed in Iceland.
In 2006, a documentary of the difficult making of Beowulf & Grendel, called Wrath of Gods, was released and went on to win six film awards in Europe and the U.S.
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Setting
While some of the film remains true to the original poem, other plot elements deviate from it: four new characters (Grendel's father, the witch Selma, Father Brendan, and Grendel's son) are introduced, and several related plot points were developed specifically for the film.
The story takes place in the early half of the 6th century CE in what is now Denmark, but the filming of the movie in Iceland provided many panoramic views of that country's landscape.
