Swedish Publisher Orders Sequel to Stieg Larsson's 'DRAGON TATTOO' Trilogy

Swedish publisher Norstedts Förlag announced today that it had enlisted writer David Lagercrantz to pen a sequel to Stieg Larsson's hit MILLENIUM trilogy, featuring THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO herself, Lisbeth Salander. Larsson passed away in 2004.

Norstedts Förlag publishing manager Eva Gedin said in an email today that: "We are proud and excited to now have signed an agreement with David Lagercrantz who, urged by his agent Magdalena Hedlund, has undertaken the challenging task of providing Blomkvist and Salander a second life, in a fourth standalone part of the Millennium series."

"Obviously it will build on the previous books," she continued. "Blomqvist and Salander will be included and many of the other characters."

Publisher Christopher MacLehose of Quercus's MacLehose Press also said: "In one sense the chance to publish a new novel in the Millennium series merely underlines the sorrow of every one of his readers that Stieg Larsson could not have gone on to complete his planned 10-book oeuvre. But-and it is now almost a new and certainly fabled genre-the sequel by another hand has been long anticipated and David Lagercrantz will keep a very great storyteller's flame alive. MacLehose Press are delighted to help him do that."

Larsson's girlfiend, Eva Gabrielsson, confirmed in 2011 that he had been working on a fourth novel following Salander and Mikael Blomkvist at the time of his death.

The sequel novel to the trilogy is currently set for an August 2015 release.

THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, the first book in the trilogy, was adapted for the big screen in 2011, written by Steven Zaillian, Larsson and directed by David Fincher. It stars Rooney Mara, Daniel Craig, Robin Wright, Stellan Skarsgård, Christopher Plummer, Joely Richardson, Goran Visnjic, Julian Sands, Steven Berkoff, Yorick van Wageningen, Geraldine James, Arly Jover, Donald Sumpter, David Dencik, Moa Garpendal, Bengt C.W. Carlsson, Mathilda von Essen and Cate Montgomery.

Based on the first novel in the best-selling Millennium trilogy by Stieg Larsson, the film tells the story of a middle-aged hard-nosed investigative reporter in Stockholm who loses a libel case and faces jail time. He's offered an assignment to investigate the 40-year-old disappearance of a industrialist's niece on a remote island. His work alongside misunderstood rebellious female hacker Lisbeth Salander uncovers religious killings, Nazism, incest, child abuse and murder.