Sony to get Dragon Tattoo?

Death is generally a huge drawback in most areas of the contemporary world. Yet it is no impediment to artistic triumph. Just look at Swedish author Stieg Larsson, whose posthumously-published Millennium Trilogy has been a stonking great literary hit. This success has not escaped the attention of Sony either, who are now looking to mine movie gold from Larsson's novels.

The Hollywood Reporter tells us that Sony are in the latter stages of negotiations to secure the English-language film rights to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest, with a view to delivering movie versions of all three. Substantial Tinseltown cheese Scott Rudin will apparently produce, while Schindler's List screenwriter Steven Zaillian has reputedly been tapped up to handle scripting chores.

Now, if at this juncture you're saying, “Hang on a ruddy second here! They've already made films of these books and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is coming out on 12 March 2010 in the UK!”, then I would be forced to counter with, “While I salute your precise knowledge of foreign language film release schedules in this country and the gist of your interjection is indeed correct, you should also be made aware that those are Swedish-language adaptations and therefore, as far as Hollywood is concerned, might as well be specks of cosmic dust dancing on the outermost tips of infinity.” The already-produced versions do have some bearing on the mooted English-language films though, as the company behind the former, Yellow Bird Productions, are also set to take a hand in the latter.

But what is Larsson's Millennium Trilogy all about? Well, Dark Horizons offer the following helpful summation: 'The story follows Mikael Blomqvist, a disgraced journalist and Lisbeth Salander, a bisexual female hacker with Asperger's syndrome who investigate the 40-year-old disappearance of a industrialist's niece on a remote island. Their investigations uncover religious killings, Nazism, rape, child abuse and murder. The next two novels deal with a conspiracy within the Government dating back to the Cold War. All three books have scored rave critical reviews, especially for the Salander character who's considered one of the most compelling female characters of modern fiction.'

And Dark Horizons won't hear any argument – or indeed that many different words - coming from Columbia Pictures president Doug Belgrad, who is poised to oversee the productions with Elizabeth Cantillon: “Lisbeth Salander is one of the most compelling characters in contemporary fiction and we couldn't be more excited about bringing this project to the screen.” Belgrad also notes that, “The novels are very cinematically told, with fantastic characters and page-turning plots. Once you start reading, they are impossible to put down.” Which doesn't really tell us very much, aside from the fact that at his book group the clichés come thick, fast and unadorned.