Claire Foy is officially playing Lisbeth Salander in “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” sequel, “The Girl in the Spider’s Web.”
Variety first reported in May that Foy was the frontrunner for the gig as the precocious Swedish computer hacker.
The new installment of Sony Pictures’ Millennium franchise will commence production in January in Berlin and Stockholm, and the film will be released on Oct. 19, 2018.
The film will team Foy and director Fede Alvarez, who helmed 2016’s “Don’t Breathe” for Sony.
“I couldn’t be more thrilled about Claire taking the reins of the iconic Lisbeth Salander,” he said. “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 for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth in the Netflix series “The Crown,” from Sony Pictures Television. She previously won the Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Award for the role. Foy also recently starred as Anne Boleyn in “Wolf Hall” and stars with Andrew Garfield in the drama “Breathe,” which premiered on Sept. 11 at the Toronto Film Festival.
The screenplay for “Girl in the Spider’s Web” was written by Steven Knight along the team of Alvarez & Jay Basu, based on David Lagercrantz’s bestseller. Amy Pascal and Elizabeth Cantillon will join Scott Rudin and Yellow Bird in producing the film.
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“The Girl in the Spider’s Web” will be the first in the series to be produced into an English-language movie in its initial adaptation. The previous books in the franchise have been adapted into three Swedish-language films, starring Noomi Rapace. Sony’s “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” starring Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig, was a remake of the Swedish film of the same name.
“The Girl in the Spider’s Web” was published in 2015 and is the first novel in the series not authored by Stieg Larsson, the series’ creator and author of the first three Millennium books about Salander and journalist Mikael Blomkvist. Larsson died in 2004.
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.
