6 Nov – What do you do when both your big stars, as well as the movie director, refuse to return for a sequel? Well, make lemonade out of lemons by taking this chance to start the franchise over. That is exactly what Sony Pictures is doing with its follow-up to 2011's "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", according to The Hollywood Reporter. Instead of fretting over the absence of original director David Fincher and lead cast Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig, the studio has tapped Alicia Vikander to star as the dragon-tattooed girl, Lisbeth Salander. Since Vikander is of Swedish descent, it is only appropriate for the actress to star in the movie that is adapted from the Swedish drama thriller book series, which is already turned into 2009 Swedish movies, "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", "The Girl who Played with Fire" and "The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest", all starring Noomi Rapace. Oscar-nominated writer Steven Knight is reportedly in talks to pen the script for the second Hollywood adaptation, which will based on the fourth book "The Girl in the Spider's Web".
It is the first book not to be written by the series creator Stieg Larsson, who died in 2004. David Lagercrantz initially faced protests from fans and even Larsson's girlfriend but proved to be a great successor when fans and critics alike gave him positive reviews for it. In "Spider's Web", superhacker Salander and investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist find themselves at the center of a tangled web of spies, cybercriminals and corrupt governments. Plans for "The Girl Who Played With Fire" to be the sequel to "Dragon Tattoo" had to be scrapped when Craig and Fincher both wanted higher pay, an impossible demand to meet since the studio is looking to make a movie with a lower budget this time around because though the first movie made USD233 million worldwide, it was still too expensive for a USD90 million-budgeted movie. This doesn't mean "Fire" will never see the light of day, however, it is still planned for release but only after "Spider's Web" and only if the upcoming movie makes enough money. Vikander most recently starred in "The Man from U.N.C.L.E.", a movie adaptation of a 1964 same name U.S. TV series, while Mara portrayed a Caucasian Tiger Lily in the recent underperforming "Pan". Craig can be seen in cinemas now in the 24th James Bond movie, "Spectre"