David Fincher's The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was a very good film, a faithful adaption of the beloved book, but not the runaway success Sony were expecting, earning $233 million worldwide on a $90 million budget. To me that's impressive, but then I'm not a Hollywood executive. Progress has been very slow on the sequel, The Girl Who Played With Fire, but there is a script ready to go for whenever the movie gets the green light, even if Fincher doesn't return. It's just, according to The Hollywood Reporter, while Sony want to move forward with it, they also want to cut some corners and proceed with a lower budget. Their first cost saving measure? Cutting out Daniel Craig's Mikael Blomkvist.
While Blomkvist is one of the lead characters of the entire trilogy of books these films are based on, he is not a major part of The Girl Who Played With Fire, which focuses mainly on Rooney Mara's Lisbeth Salander, and while losing him from the narrative isn't ideal, it would be do-able. Would it work is an entirely different story. If the movie goes forward without Craig, there will no doubt be a fierce backlash from the fans of the books. Personally, I don't think this is the right course of action, one that shouldn't have even been considered, but as I said before, I'm not a Hollywood executive.
