Here’s a minor update to Sony’s continuing plans to adapt Stieg Larsson‘s Millennium Trilogy. US box office is low, if holding relatively steady, for David Fincher‘s version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. As the movie has opened outside the US, foreign returns have been low, too. Foreign box office has become the salvation of many a film in the last few years, but even with those numbers factored in, Dragon Tattoo has earned only $100m worldwide so far — not even close to breaking even once promo costs are taken into account.
But Sony reportedly expects the movie t0 make $300m when all is said and done, and that’s enough to follow through with the sequels. Read More »
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Over the last couple weeks, one studio announcement has been conspicuously absent.
With the launch of most major film franchises — that is, the opening of a film that is envisioned as a gateway to more of the same — it doesn’t take long at all for studios to greenlight the second entry. With films based on existing properties like comic books, that announcement can come before even the end of the first film’s opening weekend. Studio accounting, shady as it is, has been refined to a science, and Thursday, Friday and Saturday numbers are often all that it takes when the time comes to pull the trigger on a sequel, or to put the gun against the temple of the young franchise.
So where’s the press release announcing that David Fincher will direct The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo sequel The Girl Who Played With Fire for Sony/Columbia? It hasn’t hit yet. But Sony says the film is still in development and that it will get made. We’ve known that Steven Zaillian is busy on the screenplay, and there has been vague talk of shooting the second and third films back to back. But will David Fincher direct? Read More »
Posted on Thursday, December 22nd, 2011 by David Chen
In this episode, Dave Chen, Devindra Hardawar, Angie Han, and Adam Quigley discuss The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011). Do screenwriter Steven Zaillian and director David Fincher find something profound or interesting to add to the pulpy source material? Tune in to find out!
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Forget 3D. IMAX is the big industry buzz this season thanks to the great audience and critical response to the early IMAX rollout of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol. A few filmmakers, notably Christopher Nolan and Michael Bay, have made tentpole films with sequences shot in IMAX, and J.J. Abrams is hinting that he might follow suit with his Star Trek sequel.
One big director that isn’t likely to shoot a few isolated sequences in IMAX is David Fincher. No real surprise, as he is a filmmaker that is very dedicated to providing a detail-oriented view of the world. He doesn’t seem like the sort of filmmaker that would want aspect ratio and resolution changes as a film went from 35mm to full-frame IMAX and back. When asked about shooting in IMAX that’s exactly what he says; get his take below. Read More »
(This review originally ran last week when Sony lifted the review embargo, but we’re running it again today to coincide with the film’s wide opening.)
Something at the center of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium novels has captured the attention of millions. Actually, make that ‘someone.’ The first novel, Män som hatar kvinnor (Men Who Hate Women, softened to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo in many countries) spins around an unlikely nucleus: counterculture heroine Lisbeth Salander, a determined outsider possessed of keen investigative skills, a vengeful spirit and a strong sense of fairness. In the 2009 Swedish film adaptation, Noomi Rapace played Salander as a character just different enough to be a forceful vision, and familiar enough to become nearly iconic. But the film in which she lives is a routine potboiler of a thriller.
The directly translated Swedish title is promising in a way, as ‘men who hate women’ hints at a thriller that will use the conventions of a serial killer story to explore the ways in which abuse and violence shape people and their relationships to one another. The first film didn’t skimp on the intersection of sex, power and violence, as a dethroned magazine publisher is hired to discover the truth about the murder of an industrial magnate’s niece, but it was never any good at getting under the skin of the story.
Enter David Fincher and screenwriter Steven Zaillian with their own take on The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Fincher also doesn’t skimp on sex and violence, and in the middle of his dark, frosty film is a strange but tightly controlled performance from Rooney Mara as Salander. This film trims minor players and subplots to focus, in a slightly more effective manner, on these characters who have been molded by violence. And yet it remains merely a routine thriller. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is a technically proficient piece of work, but it is almost as bloodless as an old murder victim. Read More »
Fans of films that might-have-been, but never-will-be, are likely aware of David Fincher‘s history with Spider-Man. (And if you read Superhero Bits Monday, you already know about this update. We’ve simply decided to highlight in detail.)
In 1999, Fincher was on a short list to possibly make the film that ended up being Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man (you can read about that here). A decade later he was once again on Sony’s wishlist before Marc Webb appropriately took the job to direct 2012′s The Amazing Spider-Man. In both cases, Fincher simply couldn’t connect with the material. We now have a pretty good idea why.
The meticulous director of Fight Club, The Social Network and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, opening Tuesday, wanted to pack all of Spider-Man’s origin into an operatic music video that would have served as the opening credits before delving into a totally different story. Read his exact quote and more after the jump. Read More »
With David Fincher doing a lot of interviews for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo over the past few days, there is a good amount of talk out there about the possible second and third films that could follow Dragon Tattoo. David Fincher doesn’t yet know if he’ll direct those films — or he isn’t yet saying, at least. That’s something that likely won’t be announced until after the film has its first opening weekend, which is coming up in a couple days.
Whether or not those films happen, there are quite a few other projects in Fincher’s queue. Some are movies he might direct, like the Cleopatra film that would star Angelina Jolie, and the pilot for the Netflix series House of Cards. He’s also got 20,0000 Leagues Under the Sea on the docket, and he’s still working as a producer on films like Black Hole (based on the Charles Burns graphic novel, not the Disney sci-fi film) and The Goon. He has offered slight updates on all those projects in the past couple days, and we’ve rounded up his quotes below. Read More »
Posted on Monday, December 19th, 2011 by Angie Han
We’re covering a few sequels in very different stages of the development process today — one that’s gearing up to begin shooting soon, another that’s yet to be greenlit, and two more that’ve been in the works for what feels like forever. After the jump:
- Bill Murray literally shreds the latest Ghostbusters 3 script to pieces
- David Fincher wants to shoot the two Dragon Tattoo sequels back-to-back
- Gary Mitchell — or Harry Mudd or Trelane or the Talosians or the Horta — could be the baddie in Star Trek 2
- Kathleen Kennedy says Roger Rabbit 2 is stalled for now
Read More »
