Just days after a new TV series was announced, a legal battle has begun over the rights to the popular Girl with the Dragon Tattoo books. The original Swedish thrillers were written by the late Stieg Larsson, and the series has continued with sequels by two other authors: David Lagercrantz wrote a trilogy, and Karin Smirnoff is currently writing another, with two novels already released.
The books have been made into films before – a Swedish trilogy with Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander, and two English-language movies starring Rooney Mara and Claire Foy. However, a new TV series adaptation has been in development for a while and faced difficulties getting produced.
The Amazon series based on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo appears to have been cancelled, but Sky announced on Tuesday that they will be creating a new series adaptation of the novels. The series will be written by Angela LaManna, known for The Haunting of Bly Manor, and Steve Lightfoot, who worked on Spider-Noir.
According to Deadline, there’s a legal conflict surrounding Sky’s Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series. Banijay has initiated arbitration against Sony (which owns Left Bank Pictures, the production company behind the series), arguing that the rights to the original Larsson novels have returned to them following the 2018 film, The Girl in the Spider’s Web.
Banijay owns Yellow Bird, the production company that made the first movies based on the Noomi Rapace novels. While there’s a disagreement between Banijay and Sony, they are currently trying to resolve it through negotiation rather than going to court.
| Film Adaptations of the Dragon Tattoo Novels | |
|---|---|
| Title | Language |
| The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009) | Swedish |
| The Girl Who Played with Fire (2009) | Swedish |
| The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest (2009) | Swedish |
| The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) | English |
| The Girl in the Spider’s Web (2018) | English |
Whether the ongoing legal issues will hold up production of the new series is still unknown. The series hasn’t started casting yet, including the iconic role of Lisbeth Salander and other key characters like journalist Mikael Blomkvist – a role previously played by Michael Nyqvist, Daniel Craig, and Sverrir Gudnason in earlier adaptations.
I’m really hoping this current disagreement doesn’t derail things, because if it does, it could end up like so many other attempts to bring this franchise to life that never quite worked out. It’s frustrating because the movies with Noomi Rapace actually covered all the books, making them unique – no other adaptation has ever managed to complete the whole story.
The 2011 film The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, directed by David Fincher, was meant to be the first in a series of three movies. Although it was a critical and commercial success, earning $239.3 million on a $90 million budget, the sequels never happened. Seven years later, Spider’s Web, directed by Fede Álvarez, didn’t revive the franchise, only bringing in $35.2 million despite costing $43 million to make.
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2026-01-15 18:58