The 2011 film The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by director David Fincher was not supposed to stand alone. It is based on a novel of the same name by Stieg Larsson, three of which exist. The original books made it to film with a Swedish trilogy, and Sony aimed to do the same for an American audience. Who better to direct than the man coming directly off of The Social Network?
Unfortunately, it never came to fruition. Fans of the books or the 2011 movie were disappointed that the full story was never fully explored. The movie clearly lays threads for future sequels, as the central mystery is only about 85% of the movie, and characters and scenes are added for things that are never connected. What happened to the trilogy?
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was a Box-Office Failure
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The biggest reason Sony scrapped David Fincher’s Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trilogy is that it failed financially. Working with a $90 million budget, it made $232 million worldwide. It had steep competition at the box office, including Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. It didn’t help that such a dark, twisted tale came out around the holidays.
So, while it did make some money, it was not enough to forge ahead on a full trilogy without at least reconsidering the plan. So that’s what Sony did, and it pushed things back. The script was delayed in 2012, and the studio brought a former Fincher collaborator, Andrew Kevin Walker (writer, Se7en), to do rewrites. As the script was being worked on, the book series was rebooted.
David Lagercrantz took the series over after that, beginning with The Girl in the Spider’s Web. At that point, Sony decided that moving forward with Fincher’s original trilogy was not their best plan of action. Instead, they scrapped the franchise that starred Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara and started over with Claire Foy and Sverrir Gudnason. The idea was to make movies along with the books, but it was a failed attempt.
The Movie Was a Critical Success
For whatever reason, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo didn’t make it with audiences, but critics loved it. It currently has a 3.9 on Letterboxd, a Rotten Tomatoes score of 86%, and a 7.8 on IMDb. Those are all good metrics. It also scored five Oscar nominations, including one for Best Actress (Rooney Mara) and a win for Best Editing. It was a critical success, but that doesn’t really drive franchises as much.
The movie and its source material are incredibly dark. It was always going to be a hit with some people and not with others. With a lot of things in it that might warrant a content warning, it’s easy to see why audiences were turned off and didn’t go see it. Unfortunately, that tanked what could have been a fantastic trilogy of movies from Fincher.
The latter two books delve deep into the characters, especially the fascinating Lisbeth Salander. With Fincher’s exceptional guidance, they really could have been two other great movies. The threads are there in the first film, and it’s a shame they’ll never see the light of day. It’s a phenomenal story with a gripping narrative across three books. The Swedish trilogy is all The Girl Who Played With Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest will get.
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