WTF: 'The Girl In The Spider's Web: A New Dragon Tattoo Story' Is The Ridiculous New Title
Those avidly following movie news probably know at this point that The Girl in the Spider's Web is a sequel to the 2011 David Fincher film The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo — only with a different director, star, and cast. It's a tad confusing, but Claire Foy's punk haircut and dragon tattoo should be enough to communicate that to audiences right? Maybe not for Sony, which just gave The Girl in the Spider's Web title a makeover that makes it the runner-up for worst title ever.
Get ready to rattle off a mouthful of a title whenever you tell you friends you want to watch that new Claire Foy movie. Two months before its theatrical release, Sony has officially retitled The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo sequel as The Girl in the Spider's Web: A New Dragon Tattoo Story. No it's not a joke, and yes, it's slapped right at the bottom of the posters below.
The hilarious thing about this is that Sony, which presumably is trying to launch a Girl With the Dragon Tattoo franchise, assumes that the 2011 film was a household name to begin with. Stieg Larsson's trilogy of novels were bestsellers but The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was a box office fumble that was outdone by the Alvin and the Chipmunks sequel. Sure, it received critical acclaim and has gone down in cinema circles as a stellar Fincher film, but I'm not sure that the "A Dragon Tattoo Story" subtitle will help clue audiences in. I loved The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo passionately, but whenever I mention it to my casual moviegoing friends, I'm usually met with general confusion.
But slapping on this new subtitle just two months before the film's release must mean that The Girl in the Spider's Web (I'm not writing out that whole damn title every time) isn't tracking too well at the box office. And it's not a huge surprise — other than Emmy-winning star Claire Foy, it boasts a relatively unknown cast with a director who helmed one minor horror hit (Fede Alvarez, Don't Breathe). And again, it's been 7 years since the original, not too successful, first film. But hey, maybe people were walking in thinking that this was a Girl on the Train sequel.
The Girl in the Spider's Web: A Dragon Tattoo Story opens in theaters on November 9, 2018.
Lisbeth Salander, the cult figure and title character of the acclaimed Millennium book series created by Stieg Larsson, will return to the screen in The Girl in the Spider's Web: A New Dragon Tattoo Story, a first-time adaptation of the recent global bestseller. Golden Globe winner Claire Foy, the star of "The Crown," will play the outcast vigilante defender under the direction of Fede Alvarez, the director of 2016's breakout thriller Don't Breathe; the screenplay adaptation is by Steven Knight and Fede Alvarez & Jay Basu.