The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo series has had a bit of a bumpy ride over on this side of the pond. Though the trilogy was a huge hit overseas when it was adapted for the big screen, it didn’t find the same success back in 2011 when David Fincher remade it.
As you surely know by now, the movie under-performed at the box office and the follow-up (at that time thought to be The Girl Who Played with Fire) spiralled down into development hell. Further problems behind the scenes with the various filmmakers and producers complicated the process even more and all hope seemed to be lost for a sequel.
Fast-forward to several months ago, when we learned that Sony had scrapped Played With Fire and instead chose to reboot the property, with director Fede Alvarez in charge and the fourth installment in the book series, The Girl in the Spider’s Web, acting as the source material. Set to hit theatres in 2018, rumors have been flying around for a while now as to who may take over for Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander, with actresses like Scarlett Johanasson and Natalie Portman said to be in the running. Turns out though that neither of them were able to make it work and now, Claire Foy has snagged the role.
The star of Netflix’s The Crown, Foy has yet to make her big break as far as film goes but is definitely a talented individual who could probably manage to slip into a role like this pretty easily. As such, we’re certainly excited to see what she does here and are happy the studio’s chosen to go with her.
That being said, it does beg the question: does anyone even care about this franchise anymore? 2011 was a long time ago and if Lisbeth Salander failed to light up the box office back then, what makes Sony think that she’ll be able to do so now? Furthermore, the original book trilogy ended in 2007, with Spider’s Web surfacing several years later in 2015 to mixed reviews. So again, we have to wonder why the studio’s even bothering pushing on with this property. If they had the original team of Fincher, Mara and Daniel Craig back in place we might be able to understand, but at this stage, a reboot just seems unnecessary.
What do you think, though? Is The Girl in the Spider’s Web a good idea? Let us know in the usual place.
Published: Sep 15, 2017 01:32 pm