As the prospects of Hollywood completing the Millennium trilogy seemed to be receding, news comes that part two, The Girl Who Played With Fire, has a screenwriter and seems to be a viable concern over at Sony. The studio has hired **Seven **scribe Andrew Kevin Walker to pen another draft of a script originally written by Steve Zaillian and will be looking to reunite Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara in the near future.
The question, as The Playlist points out, is exactly when and with what director pulling the shots? David Fincher is now tied up with Gone Girl - recent scuttlebutt has Ben Affleck signing up for that one - while Craig has another Bond outing looming on his schedule. Next year seems the likeliest option to shot before **Bond 24 **kicks off and Craig is busy saving the world from a different kind of evil.
It transpires that Fincher's long-gestating and very pricey **20,000 Leagues Under The Sea is officially, well, 20,000 leagues under the sea. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Fincher has ditched the project after trying and failing to secure his pick of leading man. Walker, his screenwriter on that so-far foiled project, is now charged with movie-fying the second in Stieg Larsson's trilogy of thrillers instead.
The Girl Who Played With Fire follows on from The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo's denouement and leaves Lisbeth Salander wealthy but rootless. Returning to Sweden, she's implicated in the murder of a journalist and reliant on Mikael Blomkvist's assistant to get to the bottom of more Scandinavian murk.