Maybe one day original ideas will take precedence over repurposing an established property for the umpteenth time, but it ain’t happening for a while after the episodic reboot of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo took its first major step forward in the three and a half years since it was first announced.
The biggest question that’s faced the small screen do-over from the very beginning is why it even needs to exist in the first place, because the source material has already been brought to the screen no less than five different times in three separate iterations, and it’s telling that only the first one succeeded.
Noomi Rapace’s star-making trilogy earned a phenomenal $215 million at the box office after releasing within nine months of each other, before David Fincher’s remake landed two years after that to end up with one Academy Award win from five nominations, before his plans for a trio were quietly scrapped.
Standalone reboot The Girl in the Spider’s Web emerged instead to get obliterated by critics and tank at the box office, but just 18 months after that it was revealed MGM was mounting a small screen do-over. That was in May of 2020, but it’s only now that a showrunner has been hired, with Venna Sud set to call the shots.
There’s only an exceedingly slim chance it’ll be the best iteration of the Lisbeth Salander saga we’ve seen – depending on your preference for Rapace or Rooney Mara – which begs the question as to why it’s suddenly been dusted off after sitting stagnant for so long.
Published: Oct 27, 2023 02:41 am