Larsson thrillers to become Columbia films

Columbia Pictures has locked up the rights to produce Hollywood versions of Stieg Larsson's Millennium book trilogy.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, the Swedish-language movie based on the first book in the late Swedish writer's crime trilogy, opens in Toronto and Vancouver on Friday.

It stars Swedish actors Noomi Rapace and Michael Nyqvist, and has been a box-office blockbuster in Sweden.

Swedish film company Yellow Bird AB announced the deal with Columbia, a subsidiary of Sony Corp., on Wednesdayand saidit will also be involved in the Hollywood productions.

Yellow Bird CEO Mikael Wallen told The Associated Press that the English-language Hollywood movies will be produced by Scott Rudin, whose credits include the Academy Award-winning No Country For Old Men. Schindler's List scriptwriter Steve Zaillian will write the screenplays.

Filming is expected to start next year, although a director has not yet been named.

Director to be named

Casting for the main roles will begin as soon as a director is chosen, Wallen said.

The movies will be set in Sweden but some parts of Larsson's stories will be changed, he added.

Larsson, a Stockholmmagazine editorand novelist, diedof a heart attack in November 2004 atage50, shortly after finishing the three thrillers. They were published posthumously.

The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest are the second and third books in the trilogy, which follows 24-year-old Lisbeth Salander, a computer hacker,and crusading journalist Mikael Blomqvist as they solve a series of murders.

The Millennium trilogy is named after Blomqvist's Stockholm magazine.

More than 12 million copies of the three novels have sold globally, and Larsson left an unfinished manuscript of a fourth book in the series.

A conflict over the author's estate has arisen between Larsson's father and brother, who inherited the rights to the books, and his long-time partner Eva Gabrielsson, who was left with nothing because they never married.