Millennium (novel series)

The Millennium Trilogy is a series of three bestselling novels written by the late Stieg Larsson. The novels in the series, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest, were first published in 2005, 2006 and 2007 respectively.

The primary characters in the series are Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist. Lisbeth is an intelligent, eccentric woman in her twenties with a photographic memory whose social skills are rather poor. Blomkvist is an investigative journalist, a celebrity in his own right, and has a history not totally dissimilar to Larsson's own.

Larsson wrote about three-quarters of a fourth novel before his sudden death in November 2004. His partner, Eva Gabrielsson, possesses the notebook computer with the manuscript; outlines or manuscripts for one or two more books may exist.

Novels

• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, original title Män som hatar kvinnor. 2005.
• The Girl Who Played with Fire, original title Flickan som lekte med elden. 2006.
• The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest, original title Luftslottet som sprängdes. 2007.

As of May 2010, a total of 27 million copies have been sold worldwide.ytytyyt

Film adaptations

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, 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 in two parts) on Swedish television. This version will be released on 14 July 2010 on DVD and Blu-ray. 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.

• The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (original Swedish title Män Som Hatar Kvinnor, literally Men Who Hate Women) had a cinema release on February 25, 2009.
• The Girl Who Played with Fire (original Swedish title Flickan Som Lekte Med Elden, literally The Girl Who Played With The Fire) had a cinema release on September 18, 2009.
• The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest (original Swedish title Luftslottet Som Sprängdes, literally The Air Castle That Exploded) had a cinema release on November 27, 2009.

Yellow Bird has partnered with Sony Pictures to produce an American adaptation of the trilogy. The films are to be 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. The first film is expected to be released in December 2011.