The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Storyline
In December 2002, Mikael Blomkvist, publisher of Millennium magazine, loses a libel case involving allegations he published about billionaire financier Hans-Erik Wennerström. He is sentenced to three months in prison and a hefty fine. Lisbeth Salander, a brilliant but damaged surveillance agent and hacker, is hired by Henrik Vanger, the patriarch of the wealthy Vanger family, to investigate Blomkvist. Vanger then hires Blomkvist to investigate the disappearance of his niece, Harriet, who vanished on Children’s Day in 1966. Vanger believes that Harriet was murdered by a family member.
Salander, who was ruled mentally incompetent as a child, is appointed a new legal guardian, Nils Bjurman (Peter Andersson), after her previous guardian suffers a stroke. Bjurman, a sexual sadist, forces Salander to perform fellatio on him in return for the money she needs to buy a new computer; he withholds the full amount she has requested. At her next meeting with Bjurman, he beats and rapes her. Having used a hidden camera to record Bjurman raping her, Salander returns to take her revenge, torturing and threatening to ruin him unless he gives her full control of her life and finances. She then uses a tattoo gun to brand Bjurman’s abdomen with the message “I am a sadist pig and a rapist”.
Blomkvist moves to a cottage on the Vanger estate and meets the Vanger family, including Harriet’s brother Martin and cousin Cecilia. Inside Harriet’s diary, he finds a list of five names alongside what might appear to be phone numbers. He visits retiring police inspector Morell, who informs him that his investigation team had been unable to decipher them. After viewing photographs taken during the Children’s Day parade, Blomkvist sees Harriet’s facial expression change suddenly just before she leaves and, after obtaining photographs taken from the same side of the street as her, comes to believe that Harriet may have seen her murderer that day.
Michael Nyqvist plays Mikael Blomkvist
After graduating from the Swedish Academic School of Drama, Michael worked mainly with theatre but also landed smaller parts in several different film productions. His first big breakthrough came in 2000 with the film TOGETHER directed by Lukas Moodysson. The movie reached great international success. After that he has played leading parts in award winning movies such as GRABBEN I GRAVEN BREDVID directed by Kjell Sundvall, AS IT IS IN HEAVEN, directed by Kay Pollak and awarded in his most recently Suddenly directed by Johan Brisinger.
Michael was always in the running for the playing the part of Mikael Blomkvist but it was his charisma that suited the role the most. Director, Neils Arden Oplev found the match he was looking for – someone who had the right looks, the charm and the likeability factor. Today he is one of Sweden’s most beloved actors.
Noomi Rapace plays Lisbeth Salander
The first issue the production team had to establish was “Who is Lisbeth Salander?”
A huge list of young female actors were considered as were unknown and inexperienced actresses as the search for Lisbeth took to the streets of Stockholm! Ultimately, what they were looking for was someone with originality. Noomi’s leading role in the feature film “Daisy Diamond” drew the attention of the production team. This was a very brave role and it was decided that with her skills and mental strength she would be able to do miracles in the role as Lisbeth with the right director.
Noomi, a self-taught actress having never been to drama school, took to the role instantly. She undertook a radial change in her appearance for starters – she cut her hair, took boxing lessons to change her body into a ball of muscle, got piercings in her eyebrow, lip, ears and nose. She even got her motorbike license! Everything is for real with Noomi, except for the huge tattoo which was imported from America!
Stieg Larsson- Author of the Millennium Trilogy
Stieg Larsson (1954-2004) was a journalist. He was the Editor-in-Chief of the magazine Expo from 1999, and had previously worked at a major news agency for many years. He was one of the world’s leading experts on anti-democratic, right-wing extremist and Nazi organisations, and he was often consulted on that account. He was just as ready to give a lecture in a secondary school as at Scotland Yard. The Millennium series is a surprisingly confidant debut in the thriller genre. The action in the books takes place in 2003 and later, mainly in Stockholm but even in other parts of Sweden and out in the world. Stieg Larsson’s primary strength is his unaffected style, free of clichés. He writes effectively, his tone is spot-on and he is professional.
On top of this, he exhibits a great knowledge of the field he writes about, a knowledge as wide as it is deep, which gives credibility to his stories. He has a fantastic ability to keep many complicated plots going at the same time. And he doesn’t leave any part of the mystery unsolved.
Niels Arden Oplev – Director
“Many people have asked me, if I felt honoured to be chosen to direct the feature film ”Men Who Hate Women” based on the first book in the Millennium trilogy of Stieg Larsson,. The truth is: When the producer Soren Staermose asked me the first time, I said no. I had heard of the books, but hadn’t read them. Furthermore, I didn’t have the time and intention to do a thriller for the cinema.”
“Soren came back half a year later and asked me again. The production time had been pushed and he was very enthusiastic about me doing the film. So I read the book, it was very intriguing but I didn’t see it as a thriller. I saw it more as a mystery drama with strong and special characters, who develop through out the story. I really connected with this material, Lisbeth being a dark rebel and Blomkvist a leftist watchdog.
I told Soren, that I would do the film, but only if I had artistic control over cast, script, length, final cut etc. Having this control, I saw as the only way for me to do a successful film based on such a popular book. That I had the sovereignty to make every decision being about doing the best possible film.”
“I wanted a film with strong emotions, strong characters and a controversial and intriguing story. This is my trademark already and this book had it all. The visual style and production design had to show a big and special film. And I wanted all the small clues and details in Larsson’s book to be there – old still photos, which makes Harriet come alive, old footages from the bridge accident, Lisbeth having a photographic memory etc. And I would like the film to keep the edge, that the book has. That it dares to show the dark side of society.”
“I asked two of the best writers in Scandinavian Rasmus Heisterberg and Nikolaj Arcel, to write the script for me. Together we dissected the book and plotted out the storyline. Rasmus and Nikolaj then wrote like crazy. The time left before the start of shooting was already short.
It took the caster Tusse Lande and I months to cast the film – I am hysterical with finding the right actor for the characters. There must be a special connection between the actor and the character. The actors must have the shine of the character. The Swedish star actor Michael Nyqvist present us with the humanity, empathy and heavyweight intellectualism, which we expect from his character Michael Blomkvist. And he does this so well, that we are captured in excitement all the way though the story.
Lisbeth Salander is possibly the character in modern Scandinavian drama with the most expectations attached, and I can’t believe the luck we have had in finding Noomi Rapace for this part. Noomi has transformed herself into her character to a chilling perfection. Her performance as Lisbeth is outstanding.”
“I talked cinema photographer Eric Kress and production designer Niels Sejer into travelling to Sweden to do this film under hectic conditions. A decision, I did not regret at any moment. They have raised the bar for this film, giving the art department work amazing details and the images a dark exciting feel.
The prep time was short and early on it became clear to me, that we needed a miracle to bring the film home on time and budget. At that time the Swedish crew came on board, a team that was determined to make a quality film even if it took long days and hard work under tough conditions. And man, did they deliver. As did the whole ensemble of actors. The feeling of the set was, that every shooting day was a battle for quality. A battle we were determined to win. And now, that the film is nearly finished, I know we did…”
Niels Rden Oplev – Director
Born 1961. Niels Arden Oplev graduated from the National Film School of Denmark in 1989. His first feature film Portland (1996) was selected for the main competition in Berlin and his second feature Chop Chop (2001) received both National Danish Film Awards Bodil and Robert. Oplev has worked as a director on the TV-series successes Taxa, Unit One, Defence and The Eagle The three last mentioned as creator of the series. Unit One and The Eagle both received the prestigious Emmy award for best foreign TV series in 2002 and 2005. His most recent feature We Shall Overcome (2006) became the most successful Danish film in 2006 and was among other awards honoured with The Crystal Bear at Berlin Film Festival same year. Oplev’s next film will be based on the first book in the bestselling trilogy The Millennium by Swedish author Stieg Larsson.
In Worlds Apart Oplev yet again shows his partiality for portraying the struggle against imperturbable authorities and static traditions. But where the autobiographic We Shall Overcome dealt with new times in the province and elementary school, Worlds Apart takes on the conflicts within the controversial and religious sect Jehovah’s Witnesses. The film is based on a newspaper article about the former witness Tabita, who at 17 succeeded in breaking away from the sect she grew up in, by choosing freedom and love as opposed to Jehovah’s religious standards. Oplev chose to let the main character Sara’s fight for the right to love and freedom be a symbol of the eternal, critical stand towards the kind of dogmatic authority which fundamentalist religions are only one part of.
(Biography was written at the time of the cinematic release for Worlds Apart)
About the Series
Introduction
The Millennium Series is based on three voluminous books, the result of a crime debut that in itself is a story of an extraordinary kind. The interest for the books, both nationally and internationally, has been almost unprecedented. The myth around the writer and the books are both tragic and mesmerizing. The author Stieg Larsson, investigating journalist himself at the magazine Expo, wrote three books of 600 pages each before handing it in to the publishing company Norstedts. Tragically and unexpectedly though, Stieg Larsson passed away before the first book was ever published.
However, the buzz around the books had already started to spread, and the following marketing campaign was proportional to the interest. 60 000 copies of the book was printed, the largest first edition for a Swedish crime debutant ever. Now all three books have sold more than 2 million copies in Sweden and almost 3,5 millions copies in total in Europe. The books is or will be published in Norway, Denmark, Finland, Great Britain, USA, Germany, France, Holland, Belgium and Israel.
Yellow Bird obtained the rights to the highly praised books and our intention is to make 6×90 min crime series for TV, based on the three books. We also believe there is a thrilling feature film story in the first book, Men who hate women, and this book will therefore be made in two versions, one 150 minute feature film and one 2 X 90 minutes for the TV-market. The feature film will be released theatrically as an introduction to the universe of Stieg Larsson’s characters. However, for the TV-audience the three books will appear in chronological order starting with Men who hate women. The Millennium Series is a high-end series targeted at an international prime time audience, to meet up with the standards and interest arisen by the books.
The Stories
The Millennium Series is a unique and new form of conspiracy and crime, written with equal parts of thorough research and enthusiastic narrative zest. The first book have the character of a classic who-done-it, the second is more of a nerve wrecking thriller, the third besides being a thriller also has great parts of court drama to it. Instead of the classic Superintendent character, the main character duo in The Millennium Series are the investigating journalist Mikael Blomkvist and his reluctant partner Lisbeth Salander, a world class hacker with a definitive social behaviour problem. The stories take place just as naturally in placeCityStockholm, Göteborg Alingsås (Nosseberga) and the small northern village Hedeby.
The Millennium Series
The major part of the first book, Män som hatar kvinnor [THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO AKA Men who hate women], consists of a classic who-done-it – a modern variety of Dorothy Sayers one might say – which ends in a dirty and bloody family drama with many corpses in the wardrobes.
Book number 2 and 3 are pure action thrillers with elements from crime novels, both in a fast, compact pace.
The gallery of characters that are introduced in the first book are found again in the second and third one, and new characters are added. At the centre we have a mismatched, but unbeatable couple: Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbeth Salander. Stieg Larsson wrote the two characters based on an adult version of two very famous Astrid Lindgren-characters – Bill Bergson the Master Detective and Pippi Longstocking.
Mikael Blomkvist is a middle-aged investigative journalist who is passionately devoted to his work. He is a part-owner and publisher of a magazine called Millennium, which examines contemporary society from a critical point-of-view, and that magazine serves as a base for much of the story in the series. Blomkvist is an honourable and rather ordinary decent citizen, gifted with a charm that means that women are easily attracted to him.
Lisbeth Salander is his complete opposite. A young Tarantino-woman with a mysterious past which has turned her into an avenger and a real outsider. She is 24 but looks more like 14, has black-dyed hair, has tattoos as well as piercings. Because of her background, Salander has had an official guardian appointed to keep an eye on her; she is deeply suspicious of all authorities and institutions and this has led to her having created a moral stance of her own. She is a world-class computer hacker, and is completely at home in the cyber world where she can get any information she wants. But just as comfortable she feels in the cyber world, just as awkward is she in the real world, with real people. Besides that, she is unusually intelligent and has a photographic memory. Blomkvist and Salander together make a formidable radar-duo and are a wonderful acquaintance for us to follow.
Niels Arden Oplev Copenhagen December 2008
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2010)
Directed by: Niels Arden Oplev
Starring: Michael Nyqvis, Noomi Rapace, Lena Endre, Peter Haber, Sven-Bertil Taube, Peter Andersson, Ingvar Hirdwall, Marika Lagercrantz, Björn Granath, Ewa Fröling, Annika Hallin, Sofia Ledarp
Screenplay by: Nikolaj Arcel, Rasmus Heisterberg
Production Design by: Niels Sejer
Cinematography by: Eric Kress
Film Editing by: Anne Østerud
Costume Design by: Cilla Rörby
Music by: Jacob Groth
MPAA Rating: R for disturbing violent content including rape, grisly images, sexual material, nudity and language .
Distributed by: Music Box Films
Release Date: March 19, 2010
