Sony Pictures Entertainment has announced that Emmy-nominated actress Claire Foy will portray the heroine Lisbeth Salander in their upcoming adaptation of The Girl in the Spider’s Web. The new installment of Sony Pictures’ Millennium franchise – based on the worldwide literary phenomenon originated by Stieg Larsson and continued by David Lagercrantz – will commence production in January in Berlin and Stockholm, and the film will be released on October 19, 2018.
The film will team Foy and director Fede Alvarez, who recently took the thriller Don’t Breathe to over $150 million worldwide and revived the Evil Dead franchise.
Alvarez said, “I couldn’t be more thrilled about Claire taking the reins of the iconic Lisbeth Salander. Claire is an incredible, rare talent who will inject a new and exciting life into Lisbeth. I can’t wait to bring this new story to a worldwide audience, with Claire Foy at its center.”
Foy is nominated for an Emmy at this weekend’s 69th Primetime Emmy Awards for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth in the hit Netflix series The Crown, from Sony Pictures Television. She previously won the Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild Award for the role. Foy also recently starred in Wolf Hall as Anne Boleyn. She just completed Steven Soderbergh’s experimental film, Unsane, and will begin work this month opposite Ryan Gosling on First Man for director Damien Chazelle.
The screenplay is by Steven Knight and Fede Alvarez & Jay Basu, based on the global bestseller written by David Lagercrantz. Amy Pascal and Elizabeth Cantillon will join Scott Rudin and Yellow Bird in producing the franchise’s new film.
The Girl in the Spider’s Web will be the first in the best-selling series to be produced into an English-language film in its initial adaptation. The previous books in the series have been adapted into Swedish-language films, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was a remake of the Swedish film. It became a global hit for Columbia Pictures, taking in over $230 million worldwide.
The studio continues its development of the next book in the Millennium series, The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye, which was released this week. Sony’s Columbia Pictures retains the rights to all future Millennium Series books.
