Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Showrunner Says ‘New Version’ Is ‘Powerful’

It was only a matter of time before Lisbeth Salander returned. In a brand-new interview while promoting the Quibi horror series The Stranger being recut into a movie for Hulu, Veena Sud offered a very exciting update for the upcoming The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo show. Sud is helming the Amazon MGM Studios’ venture, and she told Screen Rant:

“I have a classic television show coming out for Amazon, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, another angry woman out to get the bad guys and the monsters. So, I’m really excited about that, bringing it to television after 15–20 years. It’s been kind of in the stratosphere, and there’s so much to talk about today that was relevant back then — when Stieg Larsson first published the books, the trilogy — about female rage, about abuse, about the emergence of racism, white nationalism. All of the things, 20 years later, here we are. It’s super relevant today.”

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’s lead character, Lisbeth Salander, last appeared on the Silver Screen being played by Claire Foy in 2018’s The Girl in the Spider’s Web. Sud continued:

“So far, just pursuing kind of outlier women has always been the thing I love, so I’m really excited about that. Well, it’s a little bit under wraps right now, so I can’t reveal too much other than to say, ‘Welcome to female rage.’ It’s strong, it’s powerful, and it’s going to take some s—t down in the next few years. So, I’m excited that we get to see, again, a new version of a woman who just refuses to follow the rules.”

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’s Legacy

Five entries comprise the Lisbeth Salander and Millennium movie series, but it all started with the imaginings of a Swedish storyteller. Author Stieg Larsson penned a trio of novels which introduced both the characters Salander and her investigative journalist lover, Mikael Blomkvist, to the literary world in the first installment of the Millennium book series. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was originally published in 2005 as Män som hatar kvinnor, which translates to “men who hate women” in Swedish. It was later published in English (2008) long after Larsson’s unexpected death in 2004.

Before passing away, Larsson also wrote two Dragon Tattoo sequels: The Girl Who Played with Fire (2006 Swedish, 2009 English) and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest (2007 Swedish, 2009 English). All three books were adapted into Swedish films of the same name, which featured actors Noomi Rapace and Michael Nyqvist as Salander and Blomkvist respectively. In 2011, Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig picked up the Millennium mantle in the American adaptation of Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Beginning in 2015, a trio of follow-up novels were penned by another Swedish journalist and author, David Lagercrantz. The first of Lagercrantz’s installments in the Millennium series, The Girl in the Spider’s Web, was adapted into the aforementioned American movie starring Claire Foy as Lisbeth Salander. The last book in the literary franchise was titled The Girl in the Eagle’s Talons (2022) and was written by Karin Smirnoff.