Rooney Mara Cast As Lisbeth Salander In ‘The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo’
Well, so much for casting a total unknown as the central female character in theDavid Fincheradaptation ofStieg Larsson’s series of ‘Milennium’ novels. Ending a long casting search rife with rumor and speculation,Rooney Mara, ofThe Social NetworkandA Nightmare on Elm Street, has been given the part of Lisbeth Salander.
Deadlinesays that Mara had the advantage of having worked with Fincher onThe Social Network, where she impressed he and Sony. She’ll also provisionally play the role in planned sequelsThe Girl Who Played With FireandThe Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, which Fincher may or may not direct. (Sony wants him to direct; whether he will or not remains to be seen.)
Mara joins a cast thatincludesDaniel Craigas Mikael Blomkvist; and thein-talksRobin Wrightas Erika Berger andStellan Skarsgardas Martin Vanger.
So far, Mara is relatively under-exposed. Her biggest role to date has been as the ‘new Nancy’ in theA Nightmare on Elm Streetremake, in which she was certainly fine, if not exceptional. (It’s a far from exceptional movie, so there’s a lot of slack to be cut there.) She’s said to be great inThe Social Network, but trailers so far have concentrated on characters played by Andrew Garfield, Jesse Eisenberg and Justin Timberlake. Hard to get any real sense there.
David Fincher is set to shootSteve Zaillian’s script ofThe Girl With the Dragon Tattooin Sweden starting next month. WithThe Social Networkjust wrapped, that’s got to be the quickest turnaround in his career. We know that Fincher has wanted an actress that could get a handle on a Swedish accent (that is, speaking Swedish-accented English, one would assume) so I’m curious to hear and see Mara’s work. And we still don’t know a lot about Zaillian’s script. The original Swedish film based on Larsson’s novel pushed actressNoomi Rapacepretty far, and we don’t know how Fincher will handle the film’s more violent (and sexually violent) scenes. But Sony’s Amy Pascalsaid,
We’re doing the book. That’s why we hired David Fincher. We’re going to really do this, in all their glory. Otherwise why do it? They’re very R-rated movies. It’s the shock of what’s really going on underneath the surface of society. If you don’t actually make good on that, you haven’t told the story.
