We can now finally confirm that David Fincher’s Oscar-winning The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo movie adaptation is getting a followup; or, rather, a rebooting sequel. Some years ago, plans for Fincher to continue the story of Lisbeth Salander – with Rooney Mara reprising her Oscar-nominated turn from Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) – with an adaptation of The Girl Who Played with Fire, fell by the wayside. Since there, there have been rumblings of a sequel with an all-new cast and director happening instead, with the novel The Girl in the Spider’s Web serving as the source material.
Prior to the time of writing this, the last substantial update on the matter came in November 2016; at which point, Evil Dead (2013) and Don’t Breathe director Fede Alvarez was reported as being the front-runner to call the shots on The Girl in the Spider’s Web adaptation. Alvarez’ involvement with the project has now been confirmed, as has the news that the film is both sequel and reboot to Fincher’s Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, complete with a different actress in the role of the troubled, punk, crime-solver, tech genius that is Miss Salander.
Sony confirmed the news about The Girl in the Spider’s Web during the London Book Fair’s launch of the fifth installment in the original Millennium book series (upon which the Dragon Tattoo movies are based). Filming on the Dragon Tattoo movie sequel/reboot begins this September under Alvarez’ direction, in order to make an October 5th, 2018 theatrical release date. A global search for a new actress to play Lisbeth Salander in the film (taking over from Mara) is now underway.
Alvarez, who is directing from a script that he cowrote with Jay Basu (Monsters: Dark Continent) and Steven Knight (co-creator of Taboo) on The Girl in the Spider’s Web, issued the following statement, as part of Sony’s announcement:
“I’m hugely excited and grateful for this opportunity. Sony has become family to me and I can’t think of a more thrilling project to celebrate our relationship. Lisbeth Salander is the kind of character any director dreams of bringing to life. We’ve got a great script and now comes the most fun part – finding our Lisbeth.”
With more than five years having already passed since Fincher’s Girl with the Dragon Tattoo hit theaters, it had become inevitable that Sony was going to reboot the franchise in some fashion; assuming that the series would be continuing at all. Sony’s decision to skip over adapting the second and third Millennium novels (see The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest) also makes sense, from a franchise-building perspective. To clarify: whereas the first three Millennium books were written by the late Stieg Larsson and tell something of a complete story, Girl in the Spider’s Web and its followup are more one-off continuations of Lisbeth’s adventures (both written by David Lagercrantz) that lend themselves to future adaptations.
With a September production start date on the docket, it won’t be long before Millennium fans learn who will be picking up the torch from Mara and playing Lisbeth next. Both Mara and Noomi Rapace, who played Lisbeth in the Swedish-language film/TV adaptations of the original Millennium book trilogy, earned much in the way of critical acclaim for their respective work (not to mention, their physical transformations) in the emotionally-challenging role. Hence, there’s a reasonable chance that even if the next person to play Lisbeth isn’t already a well-established name, they will be by the time that The Girl in the Spider’s Web reaches theaters.
