The saga of Sony’s “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” has been a sprawling one with many twist and turns and many acrimonious behind-the-scenes battles. The David Fincher-directed film from 2011 was supposed to launch a trilogy, but carrying an exorbitant budget (not including the script and development costs and the king’s ransom Fincher was paid) and stalling at just over $100 million domestically, the franchise seemed to go into limbo. Steven Zaillian wrote a draft of the sequel, then Andrew Kevin Walker (“Se7en”) gave it a go, but Sony was never 100% happy and David Fincher went off to make “20,000 Leagues Under The Sea”— a movie that he eventually left, but spent a lot of time on in development. There was also a great deal of head butting between Fincher, producer Scott Rudin and Sony’s Amy Pascal (Fincher had to fight extremely hard for the then-unproven Rooney Mara and in the process their relationships soured).
Three/four years after the fact, it seemed pretty clear that “The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest,” the ‘Tattoo’ sequel, was never getting made with David Fincher or probably even Rooney Mara. Both of them said as much several times. But it looks like there’s still gas in the tank. Variety reports that “Don’t Breathe” and the “Evil Dead” remake director Fede Alvarez is likely to direct “The Girl In The Spider’s Web.” Or at least he’s Sony’s first choice.
And the old gang is back without Fincher including Rudin, Pascal and Steven Knight (“Eastern Promises,” “Locke”) who wrote the screenplay. “The Girl in the Spider’s Web,” is not based on one of the novel’s written by the late Stieg Larsson, the creator of the series, rather a sequel penned independently by David Lagercrantz. The character Mikael Blomkvist does feature in the books too, but it is unknown if Daniel Craig will return.
Interestingly enough, in their quickly published version of the story, Variety wrote that Rooney Mara was expected to return. They’ve since scrubbed it from the post, but it’s unclear whether it was an error or if the publication’s not allowed to include that juicy detail. Alvarez is coming off the sleeper hit success of “Don’t Breathe,” a horror/thriller that came out in August. The relatively small indie (made for $9 million) starring Jane Levy made a whopping $88 million domestically and an incredibly profitable $151 million worldwide. [Variety]