Ashleigh Hill-Buxton
Sony have been holding off on greenlighting English-language remakes of the final two films in the Millennium trilogy until “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” – the first chapter in Stieg Larsson‘s literary series – started to prove itself deserving of a seat at the box-office table. Unfortunately, with the film only doing so-so both internationally and domestically, those big numbers never came. Still, Sony have now decided they’re confident enough in the series (obviously hoping DVD and Blu-ray sales help “Tattoo”) to commit to making the following two movies, “Girl Who Played with Fire” and “Girl who Kicked the Hornets Nest”.
Deadline reports :
Studio chief Pascal and producer Scott Rudin have not yet locked in David Fincher as director. But they’re looking to start shooting #2 by the end of this year/beginning of next. Overseas, Sony now expects GWDT to do over $200M — so $300M all in globally. “And that’s a really good number,” the Sony exec told me hopefully. But one mogul counters, “The surprising part is that Sony is not waiting to see if the movie works overseas before going forward with the sequels. I would have.”
In the book and the Swedish version of that first sequel, “Girl who Played with Fire”, we barely see the character of Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara’s character in the U.S version); apparently writer Steve Zaillian has changed that and Salander will now be “front and center” of the sequel.
