15/03/2017 - The Girl in the Spider's Web will be the first film in the series to be shot in English first, under the auspices of Uruguayan director Fede Álvarez

The Millennium series will return to the big screen, though with a new author and cast. At the London Book Fair, Swedish journalist and author David Lagercrantz (I Am Zlatan Ibrahimovic) launched The Girl in the Spider's Web [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] – the first novel in the series not written by the author who created it – and Columbia Pictures announced that the film adaptation, a US-Nordic project, would be ready for a 5 October 2018 release. 

Uruguayan director Fede Álvarez (Don't Breathe, Evil Dead) will direct the thriller for Columbia Pictures, which grossed more than €218 million with its first Millennium film, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (2011), and has the rights for all new books in the saga. “Lagercrantz's brilliant work to continue this outstanding series is a tribute to Stieg Larsson's masterpiece,” said Sanford Panitch, president of Columbia Pictures. “We are honoured to be a part of it along with Sweden's Yellow Bird, and Álvarez is the perfect choice – he is a great director with a unique view of the world.”

While the perfect cast is still being decided on, the US and Nordic credits behind the camera are already confirmed: The Girl in the Spider's Web will be scripted by Steven Knight, Álvarez and Jay Basu, and produced by Scott Rudin, Søren Stærmose, Ole Søndberg, Amy Pascal, Elizabeth Cantillon, Eli Bush and Berna Levin. Anni Faurbye Fernandez, Line Winther Skyum Funch, Johannes Jensen and David Fincher will executive-produce.

Swedish author Larsson had originally planned a series of ten books, but he died at the age of 50, before he had completed the fourth. The trilogy comprising The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (aka Men Who Hate Women), The Girl Who Played with Fire (originally The Air Castle That Was Blown Up) and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest has sold approximately 80 million books. Larsson was also the first author to sell more than one million e-books on amazon.com. 

Starring Michael Nyqvist as investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist and Noomi Rapace as computer hacker Lisbeth Salander, the Swedish film versions were directed by Niels Arden Oplev and Daniel Alfredson (who helmed two). Swedish pubcaster SVT aired them as a six-part TV series, Millennium, in 2010. US director David Fincher made the American versions (2011-2013), with Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara in the leads.