The Royal Physician's Visit by Per Olov Enquist

It had a budget of 46 million Danish kroner. The film was produced by Zentropa and is a co-production among Denmark, Sweden and the Czech Republic. To avoid conflicts about rights, Enquist was contacted to clarify some instances of what he had made up and what was based on documented events, and a person was employed specifically to compare the screenplay and the novel to guarantee that they were dissimilar enough. The film's perspective and characterisation did still remain highly influenced by Enquist's version, in particular in the portrayal of Struensee as an idealistic promoter of freedom of speech, the romantic view of the royal court as an ironical charade and the role of the queen as a revolutionary partner-in-crime to Struensee. Research continued and the film was eventually credited as based on Bodil Steensen-Leth's erotic novel Prinsesse af blodet, which tells the story from the perspective of the queen, Caroline Mathilde.

The exclusive film rights for the novel were already sold to a company which had been struggling for over a decade to make a large-scale adaptation in English, and did not want to sell the rights to Zentropa.

Nikolaj Arcel and Rasmus Heisterberg started the writing process by reading the 1999 novel The Visit of the Royal Physician by Per Olov Enquist, which is based on the events surrounding Johann Friedrich Struensee's time at the Danish court.

The Royal Physician's Visit by Per Olov Enquist