The last we heard about the English-language remake of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Daniel Craig was reportedly close to signing a deal to play the lead character, investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist. Also, a lot of well-known actresses had been rumored to be playing the titular role.
Even though we still don’t know if Craig will star or who will play the lead tattooed character (Ellen Page? Keira Knightley? Carey Mulligan?), we have an update on the film that will please fans of the original Swedish-language version and the novel on which it’s based: the remake may end up being R-rated.
The info comes from Sony Pictures Entertainment co-Chairman Amy Pascal during an interview with The Wrap on the state of the movie industry in 2010. The Dragon Tattoo remake came up in the discussion when Pascal was asked why most of the movies that make money these days are known brands or are based on a pre-existing film, book or TV show.
Pascal hinted at the age-rating when asked if the dark, rebellious look of the main character, Lisbeth Salander, would be kept the same in the remake:
“We’re doing the book. That’s why we hired David Fincher. We’re going to really do this, in all their glory. Otherwise why do it? They’re very R-rated movies. It’s the shock of what’s really going on underneath the surface of society. If you don’t actually make good on that, you haven’t told the story.”
If you’re a fan of either the original Dragon Tattoo film or the source novel by the late Stieg Larsson, you’re probably wondering why the R-rating for the remake was even brought into question. To be fair, no one involved in the movie actually came out and stated it wouldn’t be rated R but we’ve at the same time, we’ve kind of been conditioned to think that most studio movies aim for PG-13, in order to open the movie to a wider (read: younger) audience.
I’ve seen the original film and am actually in the middle of reading the book, and both are uncompromising and often brutally violent, with little thought spared for how people might react to the explicitness of it (much like Let the Right One In, another popular Swedish film that’s being remade). To me, that’s part of the essence of the story and toning it down would be a flat-out mistake. Hopefully what Pascal says is true and it will be “very R-rated.”
The interview with Pascal also revealed some other interesting pieces of info, including the fact that the studio hopes that David Fincher will direct not just Dragon Tattoo but the following two movies in “The Millennium Trilogy” as well. Fincher is just about the perfect director for this material and if it turns out as well as it should, I would hope he’d carry on and finish the trilogy.
Pascal also revealed that neither of the two main characters have been cast, despite reports last month that Daniel Craig was close to signing on. However, with just a couple of months to go before shooting starts, we can expect these announcements to come any day now.
I highly recommend you head over to The Wrap to read the rest of the interview with Pascal, for her thoughts on everything from keeping up-to-date with things online to what constitutes a failure at the box office.
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is scheduled to begin shooting this October and will be released in December, 2011.
