While director David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is far from a box office bomb, the feature film adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s bestselling crime novel hasn’t exactly broken records. The $90 million pic has grossed a little over $60 million domestically since its release on December 20th, but given the widespread popularity of Larsson’s book series many believed the film would be performing better. While Sony has been planning on adapting all three books in Larsson’s Millennium series from the start, Dragon Tattoo’s box office performance had me wondering if their plan would be altered. My question was given an answer today, with the news that Sony is still moving forward with an adaptation of The Girl Who Played with Fire. Hit the jump for more.Speaking with EW, a Sony rep had this to say regarding the sequel:

“[Dragon Tattoo] continues to do strong business and nothing has changed with respect to development of the next book.”

The rep went on to say that “development continues” with screenwriter Steven Zaillian’s adaptation of The Girl Who Played with Fire. Zaillian, who wrote Dragon Tattoo, was tapped to start working on the sequel well before Fincher’s film hit theaters. Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig are already locked to return for both sequels, but Fincher has yet to decide whether he’ll be back. The director recently opined that, if he were to return, it would be prudent to film both The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest back-to-back. Given that Dragon Tattoo isn’t necessarily a box office smash, it’ll be interesting to see if Sony gives the go-ahead for both sequels or if they simply greenlight Fire for the time-being. Whatever the case, I wouldn’t be surprised if the budget for the follow-up is reigned in a bit.

Reviews for Dragon Tattoo weren’t terrible, but the general consensus for Fincher’s take was more lukewarm than rapturous. I enjoyed the movie quite a bit and still don’t really understand some of the vitriol spewed its way; I found the story lacking (as did most), but really liked the character work with Mara and Craig. Regardless, the box office run of Dragon Tattoo is far from over and international grosses are sure to play a factor in the handling of the sequels. Hopefully we’ll hear more soon, especially regarding Fincher’s involvement.

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