Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Series that started with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo seemed to have all the promise for a Hollywood franchise. The source material was beloved and acclaimed worldwide, and a complete trilogy starring Noomi Rapace had even been produced in the novels’ home country of Sweden. The American adaptation had a grade-A pedigree with Daniel Craig, Rooney Mara, Christopher Plummer, and Stellan Skarsgård. It even had the amazing talents of David Fincher behind it. What’s more is that the film was good. More than good. It was great.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t the feel bad film of the Christmas season of 2011 that audiences wanted, and despite the big fan base, the film was only a modest success, making $230 million worldwide. It’s not a flop by any means, but with a budget of $90 million (with costs likely costing around $180 million after advertising), it was likely struggling to make back its money by the end. In short, there seemed to be no rush to make a sequel anytime soon. Obviously, since it’s been a good five-plus years since then, Sony, in fact, didn’t rush, as expected. 

Last November, it was revealed that rather than going forward with a true sequel (which would be with The Girl Who Played With Fire), the studio would opt to adapt the fourth book in the series, The Girl in the Spider’s Web, which was famously not written by the now-deceased Larsson, but instead another writer named David Lagergrantz. Even more exciting, around the same time, Fede Álvarez of Don’t Breathe and Evil Dead fame signed on to direct this new film. At the time, Rooney mara was stillattached to return to reprise her role as Lisbeth Salander.

Now, a new report from THR is saying that Sony has settled on a release date for the new film for October 5, 2018, meaning that it will open up against Warner Bros.’ Aquaman. The bigger news here, however, is that Mara is no longer attached to play Lisbeth, and that the film will actually feature an entirely new cast.

This is definitely a bummer for those of us who enjoyed that first American take on the source material. That being said, given the amount of time that’s best and the new talent involved, it’s probably for the best. It would have felt unsatisfying that we never got to see that version of Lisbeth and Blomkvist come to good terms with one another, and at least with this new cast, we feel less like we missed something big in between films.

What do you think of this news? Do you plan on seeing The Girl in the Spider’s Web when it hits theaters on October 5, 2018? Let us know your thoughts not

Don’t forget to share this post on your Facebook wall and with your Twitter followers! Just hit the buttons on the top of this page.

SOURCE: THR