Director Fede Alvarez's THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER'S WEB is both a film I'm looking forward to and one which I'm already disappointed with even before it starts filming. While I like the idea of the director of EVIL DEAD 2013 and DON'T BREATHE making a follow-up of sorts to THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, I'm disappointed that Alvarez and Sony Pictures have chosen to recast the actors David Fincher had cast as lead characters Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist in DRAGON TATTOO. That film left me wanting to see a lot more of those actors in those roles, especially Mara as Salander. For years, I hoped sequels would get made with them returning… but that's never going to happen.
As his Salander, Alvarez has cast Claire Foy, a British actress I'm not very familiar with. I'm willing to give her a chance, but it's going to be tough to get past the wish that Mara was back.
As THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER'S WEB nears production, Alvarez is assembling the rest of the cast around Foy, starting with the film's villains.
Details on the character haven't been revealed, but Danish actor Claes Bang has been cast as "one of the antagonists". Another one of those antagonists will be played by BLADE RUNNER 2049's Sylvia Hoeks, and it has been revealed that the Dutch actress will be playing "Salander's evil twin".
An evil twin? That soap opera cliché gives me another reason to feel wary of this film.
THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER'S WEB is based on the fourth novel in the Lisbeth Salander series, which was written by David Lagercrantz (taking over from the late Stieg Larsson, writer of the first three novels.) The screenplay adaptation has been written by Steven Knight, Alvarez, and Jay Basu. The plot:
She is the girl with the dragon tattoo — a genius hacker and uncompromising misfit. He is a crusading journalist whose championing of the truth often brings him to the brink of prosecution.
Late one night, Blomkvist receives a phone call from a source claiming to have information vital to the United States. The source has been in contact with a young female superhacker — a hacker resembling someone Blomkvist knows all too well. The implications are staggering. Blomkvist, in desperate need of a scoop for Millennium, turns to Salander for help. She, as usual, has her own agenda. The secret they are both chasing is at the center of a tangled web of spies, cybercriminals, and governments around the world, and someone is prepared to kill to protect it…
Produced by Scott Rudin, Amy Pascal, Elizabeth Cantillon, and Yellow Bird, the film is scheduled to begin filming in January, with locations including Berlin and Stockholm.
THE GIRL IN THE SPIDER'S WEB reaches theatres on October 19, 2018.