Here we go again.
A few years ago I wrote that I didn't know how many more "Millennium" adaptations I could handle. I read Stieg Larsson's books about 20 years ago and thought they'd make great movies. Now, I'm kind of over it. And there's another reboot on the way, a Sky series that starts shooting in Lithuania next month.
Yet, the part people are actually made about. Viola Prettejohn ("The Crown," "The Nevers") is playing Lisbeth Salander, but it's David Oyelowo ("Selma”) as Mikael Blomkvist that has everybody going.
Go through the replies on any post about this and it's a lot of complaining. Some are saying Blomkvist is so tied to that Swedish setting that the casting feels off. Some, like me, are just tired of this thing getting remade every few years. And some of it is just ugly, which, sure, it's the internet.
Look, Oyelowo is a good actor. He was terrific as MLK in "Selma" and pretty much held up "Bass Reeves" by himself. My bigger worry is whether a modern-day version can keep the feel of the book.
Yes, Sky’s reboot is being updated to the present. Blomkvist is now a "cancelled" star reporter who teams up with Salander to look into the decades-old disappearance of Harriet Vanger, who vanished from the island estate of one of Sweden's richest industrial families. The more they dig, the closer the danger gets. My guess, and it's only a guess, is that the old Nazis from the book get swapped out for present-day neo-Nazis. Just a hunch.
We've done this before. The Swedish trilogy made Noomi Rapace a star. Fincher's 2011 movie with Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig was really good, and it still bugs me he never did a sequel, and instead opted to sell off his creative juice to Netflix. What we got instead was Fede Álvarez's "The Girl in the Spider's Web" in 2018, with Claire Foy as Salander, based on one of the David Lagercrantz books. Does anybody even remember it?
Also, whatever happened to that Amazon/MGM series announced during the strikes, the one with "The Killing" creator Veena Sud as showrunner? Haven't heard a thing about it since. Now it's Sky, with Sony Pictures Television and Left Bank Pictures producing.
Sky’s reboot is being updated to the present. Blomkvist is now a "cancelled" star reporter who teams up with Salander to look into the decades-old disappearance of Harriet Vanger,