Most every young actress in Hollywood wants to play homicidal, binge-drinking bisexual Lisbeth Salander, the title character in the upcoming movie “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.”
Some industry insiders say there hasn’t been such a frenzied casting search since the two-year hunt for Scarlett O’Hara in “Gone with the Wind” (1939), which propelled Vivien Leigh to stardom.
“There aren’t that many good parts out there these days,” one producer said of the adaptation of the best-selling novel. “Every chick wants to play it.”
But the plum will probably go to an unknown, now that director David Fincher has rejected such name stars as Natalie Portman, who’s almost too old at 29; Ellen Page, 23 (“Juno”), and Carey Mulligan, 25, (“An Education”), who were deemed to be too clean-cut; and Emma Watson, 20, of the “Harry Potter” movies, who denied she cut her hair short to audition for Fincher.
Among those in the running: Rooney Mara, 25, whom Fincher directed in the upcoming “The Social Network;” Léa Seydoux, 25, of “Robin Hood”; and two unknown Australians, Sophie Lowe, 20, and Sarah Snook, age unknown.
The novel by the late Swedish journalist Stieg Larsson has two sequels — “The Girl Who Played With Fire” and “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest” — and whoever gets the Lisbeth role will be locked in for them, as well. Larsson’s trilogy has sold over 27 million copies in 40 countries.
Sony Pictures and producer Scott Rudin plan to start shooting “Dragon Tattoo” — not to be confused with a 2009 Swedish-language film of the same title — this fall for a December 2011 release. “Fincher will have to make a decision in the next week or two,” said an insider. Daniel Craig has been cast as fearless reporter Mikael Blomquist. Robin Wright will play his sometime lover, magazine editrix Erika Berger. “The whole process is very secretive,” the insider said. “Fincher wants an unknown, but it changes on a daily basis.”