It has been announced that the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo series will not in fact be receiving another instalment of Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig tackling The Girl Who Played With Fire but will in fact be rebooted with none other than current rising star Alicia Vikander (Ex Machina, Man From U.N.C.L.E, Burnt). A change of cast is not highly surprising given that the first film was several years ago and a sequel has taken an unusual amount of time to arise, but Sony deciding to get the franchise back on track is a clear consequence of the success of David Lagercrantz addition to the books with The Girl In The Spiders Web. Vikander is not a choice I would say is from far left field, the tragectory of her career is clearly on its way up and she’s of the right age and also not currently attached to any other franchise. The question is, is she up to the task?

Vikander has proved that she can do cold and calculating with her role in Ex Machina but it’s hard to imagine her with Salander’s signature look. It’s hard to judge until there’s more information and the project actually goes into production but of course she has the potential to take on the role without problem. The one definite positive is it will be good to have another Salander who is in real life Swedish, and possibly take us back to the days of Noomi Rapace as the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

There are just so many negatives with this news, the film may not have completely smashed it at the box office but it definitely lived up to the books, which is not an easy thing to achieve. Not only is Mara being replaced, but also Daniel Craig will not be returning as Mikael Blomkvist as well as the fact that David Fincher will not be directing the next film. With the majority of things that made the first film good being removed from the next it’s hard not to have some trepidation of the project. Realistically time will only tell how this will pan out, once it’s announced who will be attached to direct and who will be taking over as Mikael it will be more clear.

I am a big fan of this series, both the English and Swedish adaptations and all of the books, Lagercrantz Girl In The Spiders Web was a decent attempt to live up to Larsson’s original trilogy, though it did not completely follow the original style, not quite reaching the darkness the originals had that made them so compelling.

It seems too often these days the solution of getting a film into production and onto the big screen quicker is to replace everyone and everything and just do it a different way, just to throw out a quick sequel or a too soon reboot, and it definitely doesn’t always work. With this franchise however it’s been a few years, and it is possible if done the right way that this could be a successful change, I am just sincerely hoping that these changes are not being made to change Girl With The Dragon Tattoo into a franchise for the mainstream and take away from the not so much bright and bubbly tone. As I’ve said, only time will tell.