The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is the first book (and film) in Swedish author Stieg Larsson’s bestselling Millenium Trilogy. The books have sold 65 million copies worldwide, and the three Swedish films have done blockbuster business throughout Europe and excessively well during limited runs here in the States. This much we know. The mohawked elephant in the room though is David Fincher‘s American remake/adaptation that hits theaters this week. Was it necessary to remake something already popular on such a global scale? Can Fincher improve upon Niels Arden Oplev’s original film? Can Rooney Mara do an equal or better job with the role that made Noomi Rapace an international star? No. Yes. And hell yes.

Anybody who has either read Stieg Larsson’s Millenium Series or seen the original film adaptations directed by Niels Arden Oplev and Daniel Alfredson knows that David Fincher’s upcoming film The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is going to have two potential sequels after its release. The question is, will he pass the torch to another director to make the English language versions of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest and The Girl Who Played With Fire like Oplev did, or will he take them on himself? Ace Showbiz reports that Fincher spoke on this very issue during a recent press release, and though he doesn’t sound all that thrilled with having to make Dragon Tattoo sequels, he’s probably going to do it anyway. He plans on making them the same way you pull off a bandage though, in one quick motion so that he can be done with it.

Generally, the last thing in the entire marketing universe that interests me is an upcoming film’s website, but damned if Sony Pictures hasn’t conceived of a nifty site for their The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo English-language remake that isn’t packed with some fine material. The film already has enough to recommend it – it’s based on Stieg Larsson’s bestselling book series, it’s a stylish remake of a homegrown Swedish take on the material that few people saw stateside, and it combines the talents of director David Fincher and stars Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara. Basically, you already know if you’re going to check this film out, but Sony isn’t sitting around counting painful piercings and bad tattoos until its release date – they’re coming for an audience with a surprisingly user-friendly site that may suck in people who’ve so far avoided the Dragon Tattoo phenomenon.

A couple days ago a red band trailer for David Fincher’s upcoming adaptation of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” hit the Internet and made the rounds among movie blogs and message boards. It wasn’t really clear if it was an unintentional leak, or if it was put out to look as an intentional leak as a bit of viral marketing that fit in well with the hacker status of the female protagonist, or maybe if it was just a trailer released without much fanfare due to its pseudo NSFW status. But none of that really matters anymore. Now we’ve got an officially released trailer for the film that looks a heck of a lot like the leaked one, but is all high definition and pretty, and doesn’t have any bits that are naughty (sorry, side boob lovers). So what does this trailer have in store for us? Nothing shocking really; but enough to get my blood pumping anyways. This little bit of advertising is quick, kinetic, and full of energy. It’s got a hip re-imagining of a Led Zeppelin classic, a very digital, very typical of David Fincher aesthetic, very gorgeous production design. Also, it probably can’t help but remind me a lot of that one movie I saw… you know, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. The trailer is a reminder that I’ve already heard this story, already solved this mystery, already lived alongside these characters, and it can’t help but feel awfully familiar. But it looks awfully damn pretty [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Foreign Objects travels the world of international cinema each week to look for films worth visiting. So renew your passport, get your shots, and brush up on the local age of legal consent, this week we’re heading to… Sweden!

David Fincher is a fascinating director, and when he’s on top of his game we get brilliant films like Seven, The Game, and Zodiac. He’s currently finishing up the much-anticipated Facebook movie, The Social Network, with Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, and Justin Timberlake. But what’s next for the director?