The Candid Thoughts of Director David Fincher on The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo: A Must-Read!

David Fincher reflects on The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo with a sense of pride, despite its underperformance at the box office. The 2011 thriller, adapted from Stieg Larsson's best-selling novel, featured Rooney Mara in the role of Lisbeth Salander, a resilient computer hacker enlisted by a journalist (played by Daniel Craig) to assist in solving a decades-old disappearance. Mara's exceptional performance earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. Although The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo fell short of Sony's box office expectations, it still managed to generate a respectable $239 million worldwide, considering its reported budget of $90 million.

Despite the disappointment from Sony's perspective, Fincher himself remains proud of his work on the film. He acknowledges that the outcome did not align with the high hopes set by the original book's global success. Fincher shared his sentiments about the film during a Masterclass session at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival, as reported by EW. Discover his thoughts in the following excerpt.

We approached the project with the means available to us, disregarding the criticism that it may have been too expensive for the return on investment. I acknowledged the possibility of failure and accepted it. I wanted to explore the idea of taking a highly anticipated material and pushing it to its limits, both creatively and financially, to determine if it could withstand the substantial resources required. From the beginning, our intention was to create a film that would honor its Swedish heritage without causing embarrassment. When the suggestion was made to shoot the film in Atlanta instead, I hesitated. How could Atlanta truly capture the essence of Sweden? We were determined to stay true to the authenticity of the story. Filming in Sweden meant long days, often lasting eight or nine hours if we were lucky. As a result, the production took 140 days to complete. Despite the challenges, I felt a sense of pride in achieving what we had set out to do.

Sony Changed Franchise Plans After The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Though The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was not a box office success, Sony did not immediately abandon plans for future films. David Fincher, the director of the first movie, began working on the intended sequel, which was based on Stieg Larsson's story The Girl Who Played With Fire, featuring the character Lisbeth Salander. However, due to constant rewriting and other delays, Sony eventually decided to move on from Fincher's Dragon Tattoo follow-up. As a result, neither of Larsson's original Millennium trilogy sequels were ever adapted by Sony (the three books were previously adapted in Sweden, with Noomi Rapace portraying Salander).

The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest were canceled by Sony, but their interest in Lisbeth Salander continued. In 2018, the studio released The Girl in the Spider’s Web, a film adaptation of David Lagercrantz's 2013 book. The movie, featuring Claire Foy as the new Lisbeth Salander, attempted to revive the dormant franchise. However, it performed poorly at the box office, earning only $35 million against a $43 million budget.

The failure of The Girl in the Spider’s Web appears to have ended the Dragon Tattoo movie franchise. Nevertheless, reports in 2020 suggested that Amazon was developing a TV show based on the further adventures of Lisbeth Salander. Unfortunately, there have been no recent updates on the progress of this Amazon project. While it seems unlikely that Fincher will return to the world he created in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, he seems satisfied with his accomplishments on the original film.

Source: EW