Taking on the film adaptation of a globally celebrated novel is an intimidating task — just ask any of those fried Harry Potter directors. Or you could ask David Alfredson, who took up the directorial torch from Niels Arden Oplev, who helmed “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” to make that film’s sequel, “The Girl Who Played With Fire.”
Steig Larsson’s Millenium trilogy, the crime thrillers on which the films are based, have achieved a rabid international following. Luckily for Alfredson, he was able to avoid fan scrutiny because “the novels had just come out in Scandanavia when I got the job and nobody thought that they would travel as much as they did. Later during the editing process … we understood they were extremely successful novels.”
With his fingerprint on the franchise, Alfredson is now curious to see how Hollywood will handle its version of the stories, especially since it has been announced that Daniel Craig will star as leading man Mikael Blomkvist.
“It’s their project. I’m not really into it,” Alfredson says. “I think it will be very hard for them to find a Lisbeth Salander. For me, Noomi Rapace is Lisbeth Salander.”
