Sony Going Forward with Millennium Series

Despite poor box office performance, Sony execs have decided to continue Swedish author Steig Larsson's bestselling Millennium trilogy.

According to the article in Deadline, Sony Pictures is going forward with The Girl Who Played With Fire, the sequel to Dragon Tattoo, which has already been written by Steve Zaillian.  Sony hopes to start shooting Played With Fire by the end of this year or the beginning of next. and Zaillian has already started The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, the final book in the series.

As of Sunday, Dragon Tattoo has earned $76.8M domestically and is close to reaching $100M.  From Deadline's article, it looks as though studio execs believe Dragon Tattoo's poor box office performance was mostly because of its Christmas release.  Given the graphic content of Dragon Tattoo, I wonder why Sony thought Christmas was a good release date for the movie in the first place.

It's possible that if Sony had picked a better release date, the movie would have done better domestically, and it sounds as though they're going to learn from their mistake and do better in the release of the second film.