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* ''[[The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo]]'' (''Män som hatar kvinnor'', literally ''Men Who Hate Women'') (2005)
* ''[[The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo]]'' (''Män som hatar kvinnor'', literally ''Men Who Hate Women'') (2005)
* ''[[The Girl Who Played with Fire]]'' (''Flickan som lekte med elden'', literally ''The Girl Who Played with the Fire'') (2006)
* ''[[The Girl Who Played with Fire]]'' (''Flickan som lekte med elden'', literally ''The Girl Who Played with the Fire'') (2006)
* ''[[The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest]]'' (''Luftslottet som sprängdes'', literally ''The Cloud Castle that was Blown Up'') (2007)
* ''[[The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest]]'' (''Luftslottet som sprängdes'', literally ''The Castle in the Air that was Blown Up'') (2007)


==Origins and publication==
==Origins and publication==

Revision as of 02:58, 8 February 2012

Millennium series
 
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
The Girl Who Played with Fire
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest
AuthorStieg Larsson
LanguageSwedish
GenreCrime / Mystery novel
PublisherNorstedts Förlag (Swedish)
Published2005-2007
Media typePrint (paperback, hardback)

The Millennium series is a series of bestselling novels originally written in Swedish by the late Stieg Larsson (1954-2004). The primary characters in the series are Lisbeth Salander, a woman in her twenties with a photographic memory and poor social skills, and Mikael Blomkvist, an investigative journalist and editor of a magazine called Millennium. Blomkvist, the character, has a history similar to Larsson, the author.[citation needed] There are three books in the series:

Origins and publication

When Larsson was 15 years old, he witnessed the gang rape of a girl, which led to his lifelong abhorrence of violence and abuse against women. The author never forgave himself for failing to help the girl, which inspired the themes of sexual violence against women in his books.[1][2]

In writing the series, Larsson was also influenced by two murders: Melissa Nordell, a model killed by her boyfriend, and the Honor killing of Fadime Sahindal, a Swedish-Kurdish woman killed by her father.[3] Both women were killed at the hands of men or as victims of honor crime. To Larsson, there was no difference and the "systematic violence" against women highly affected and inspired him to take action against these crimes through his writing. Eva Gabrielsson, Larsson's longtime partner, wrote that "the trilogy allowed Stieg to denounce everyone he loathed for their cowardice, their irresponsibility, and their opportunism: couch-potato activists, sunny-day warriors, fair-weather skippers who pick and choose their causes; false friends who used him to advance their own careers; unscrupulous company heads and shareholders who wangle themselves huge bonuses... Seen in this light, Stieg couldn't have had any better therapy for what ailed his soul than writing his novels." [4]

Larsson submitted the manuscripts for all three volumes in the series to two Swedish publishers, with Norstedts Förlag accepting the manuscripts for publication. Norstedts commissioned Steve Murray, under the pen-name of Reg Keeland, to undertake the English translation.[5] Larsson tried to get British publishers to accept his book, but was turned down until Christopher Maclehose bought the global English language rights of the book for Quercus, a small London publisher.[6][7] Alfred A. Knopf bought the U.S. rights to the books after Larsson's death in 2004.[8]

By May 2010, 27 million copies had been sold worldwide,[9] a number that would grow to more than 46 million over the next five months,[10] and reach 65 million in December 2011.[11] In July 2010 the series made Larsson the first author to sell a million electronic copies of his work on the Amazon Kindle.[12]

Unfinished material

Larsson wrote about three-quarters of a fourth novel before his sudden death in November 2004. His partner, Eva Gabrielsson, is in possession of the notebook computer with the manuscript but does not own the rights to Larsson's work. This is because Larsson, in an attempt to protect Gabrielsson from the people he was investigating in real life (Swedish Neo-Nazis and racists), never married and wrote his will without any witness (thus making it invalid according to Swedish law). Thus, at his death, it is his family that ended with the succession.[13] Outlines or manuscripts for one or two more books may exist.[9][14]

Film adaptations

Swedish films

The Swedish film production company Yellow Bird has produced film versions of the Millennium Trilogy, co-produced with The Danish film production company Nordisk Film and television company,[15] which were released in Scandinavia in 2009. In 2010, the films were shown in an extended version of approximately 180 minutes per film as a six-part miniseries (each film divided in two parts of 90 minutes) on Swedish television. This version was released on July 14, 2010 on DVD and Blu-ray Disc in three separate sets and on November 24, 2010 as a Complete Millennium Trilogy box set with an extra disc.

Originally, only the first film was meant for a theatrical release, with the following ones conceived as TV movies, but this was changed in the wake of the tremendous success of the first film. The first film was directed by Niels Arden Oplev and the next two by Daniel Alfredson, while the screenplays of the first two were adapted by Nikolaj Arcel and Rasmus Heisterberg, and the last one by Ulf Rydberg and Jonas Frykberg. All three films feature Michael Nyqvist as Mikael Blomkvist and Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander.

American films

Yellow Bird, Relativity Media, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures, and BBC Films partnered with Sony Pictures to produce an American adaptation of the first novel. The film is written by Steven Zaillian, directed by David Fincher and produced by Scott Rudin, with Daniel Craig as Mikael Blomkvist and Rooney Mara as Lisbeth Salander. Along with Dragon Tattoo, Fincher and Zaillian have signed a two picture deal to also adapt The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest, which will be shot back to back. In January 2012, it was announced that Sony was "moving forward" with the adaptation of The Girl Who Played with Fire, with Zaillian in the early stage of scripting it for a planned release in late 2013.[16][17]

References

  1. ^ James, Susan (August 5, 2010). "Stieg Larsson Silent as Real-Life Lisbeth Raped". ABS News. Retrieved 2011-06-06.
  2. ^ Penny, Laurie (2010-09-05). "Girls, tattoos and men who hate women". New Statesman. Retrieved 2010-10-19.
  3. ^ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1299216/Stieg-Larsson-wrote-novel-The-Girl-Dragon-Tattoo-fuelled-brutal-rape.html
  4. ^ Gabrielsson, Eva, Marie-Françoise Colombani, and Linda Coverdale. "There Are Things I Want You to Know" about Stieg Larsson and Me. New York: Seven Stories, 2011.
  5. ^ Acocella, Joan. "Man of Mystery".  New Yorker (1/10/2011), Vol. 86, Issue 43
  6. ^ Clark, Nick (2010) The publishing house that Stieg Larsson built The Independent, 6 August 2010, accessed 10 March 2010
  7. ^ Profile: Stieg Larsson: Even his early death became a big thriller The Sunday Times, 27 September 2009, accessed 10 March 2010
  8. ^ "American Readers, Waiting Impatiently For 'The Girl'" NPR (April 5, 2010). Retrieved February 5, 2011.
  9. ^ a b McGrath, Charles (23 May 2010). "The Afterlife of Stieg Larsson". The New York Times Magazine.
  10. ^ "The Continuing Mysteries of Stieg Larsson". CBS News. October 10, 2010. Retrieved 2012-01-12.
  11. ^ Hassan, Genevieve (December 25, 2011). "Hollywood takes on Girl with the Dragon Tattoo". BBC News. Retrieved 2012-01-12.
  12. ^ Hachman, Mark (July 28, 2010). "Stieg Larsson Sells a Million Books on Amazon's Kindle". PC Magazine. Retrieved 2012-01-12.
  13. ^ Gabrielsson, Eva. "Biography Eva Gabrielsson". Newest happenings in E.G.'s life. Steiglarsson.com. Retrieved 9 June 2011.
  14. ^ "The Fourth Book". Retrieved 2010-04-07.
  15. ^ "Yellow Bird Puts SEK 106m Millennium Project In Production". nordiskfilmogtvfond. 2007-11-02. Retrieved 2009-09-22.
  16. ^ "'Dragon Tattoo' sequel still on track, Sony says". EW.com. January 3, 2012. Retrieved January 3, 2012.
  17. ^ "'Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' Sequel is Still Moving Forward". ScreenRant.com. January 3, 2012. Retrieved January 3, 2012.
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