David Fincher is a pretty busy guy these days, just look at the number of projects that his name is attached to. His film, ‘The Social Network’, and rumours flying around about ‘Pawn Sacrifice’ and ‘Heavy Metal’ makes Fincher a director who is clearly in demand.
As a die-hard fan of Fincher and Stieg Larsson’s ‘Millennium Series’, this news pretty much made my day. From the director who brought us ‘Se7en’, ‘Panic Room’, ‘Zodiac’ and ‘Benjamin Button’ (very aware I’ve almost listed his entire filmography, but he is just that good!) comes the news, according to The Playlist, that his newest project will be an US version of ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’, the first in the Swedish trilogy.
The stories (‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’, ‘The Girl who Played with Fire’ & ‘The Girl who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest’) follow Lisbeth Salander, a computer hacker with a photographic memory and Mikael Blomkvist, an investigative journalist. Together the two of them become embroiled in stories and incidences which lead through economic and social issues. Without giving too much away, the stories are full of intrigue and mystery and highly recommended reads in my book (sorry about the pun!).
‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ was awarded the prestigious Glass Key Award as the best Nordic crime novel in 2005. The second in the series received the Best Swedish Crime Novel Award in 2006. Unfortunately, the author of the series, Stieg Larsson died in 2004 of a heart attack and never saw how successful his collection became. As well as the original trilogy, he also left the unfinished manuscript of the fourth novel and synopses of the fifth and sixth in the series, which was intended to contain an eventual total of ten books.
The series was produced by Yellow Bird in Sweden and stars Michael Nyqvist as Mikael and Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth. ‘Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ has recently been released in Swedish in the United Kingdom and received a five star rating from Empire Magazine. But with a US produced Scott Rudin (‘Margot at the Wedding’, ‘The Queen’ & ‘Notes on a Scandal’) version and with Steve Zaillian (‘American Gangster’, ‘Gangs of New York’, ‘Schindler’s List’) currently writing the screenplay, this adaptation looks set to thrill.
With the director now in place, the next step is casting. With Fincher saying that he is looking for a cast of unknowns, names such as Carey Mulligan, Brad Pitt and George Clooney are already appearing as possible members. ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ will be Fincher’s next picture after Facebook based film ‘The Social Network’ and shooting is set to begin in September or October.
I am certainly looking forward to seeing this adaptation and how Fincher deals with his first ever remake. Known for making particularly dark films, this should not give him too many problems but I wonder how the film will translate to the screen for a second time…
