David Fincher's "Girl With Dragon Tattoo" remake starring... Die Antwoord's Yo-Landi?

Reports are circulating that director David Fincher imagines Die Antwoord's Yo-Landi Vi$$er in the role of fem-hacker/ass-buster/avenging angel Lisbeth Salander for his upcoming remake of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" (book / film). New York Magazine, Slashfilm, and Twitchfilm have items explaining why she'd be dynamite in this role, given the character's description in the original book. I reached out to Yo-Landi to set the record straight, and alas (or not), it is not to be. Ms. Vi$$er declined the role. She *will* be busting ass and avenging injustice, but in her existing role as frontwoman for the South African rap-rave act, which will be touring, recording, and promoting like hell around the globe for the foreseeable future. (thanks for the tip, Richard LaRue / photographer unknown, ganked from Yo-Landi's Facebook profile)

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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TheMonument

No way, her accent is too heavy. She does have the right look though.

That being said, is there a good reason why BB is jocking these guys so hard? Sure they’re kind of amusing but that’s about it, the music is awful.
- MrsBug
  
  I’m glad someone else said. I was beginning to wonder if I was just a cultural philistine or something. I just don’t have the love for Die Antwood. Not a hater, just not a liker either.
groovehouse

Best of luck to Die Antwoord on their future tour!

DA gets “jocked” on BB so hard, because BB practically broke them here in the states. To me, BB was integral in getting DA on the map here in the states!

Thanks BB and keep bringing us great articles, bands, films, links, shorts, art, artists and the multitude of other things you guys do so well!
MadMolecule

That haircut makes her look like an eight-year-old country boy.
Johan

I don’t understand, why is this article completely uncritical of the shameless remake-culture of the US?

A premature remake of a popular EU movie featuring a girl from an act that has been featured more than often on various weblogs. Seriously?
Anonymous

A remake?
Facepalm :(
The original film is one of the best book->film conversions I’ve seen. The sub plots that are cut, are cut well (it would be nice to have everything in, but then the film would have been 5 hours long), the acting is great (Noomi Rapace captures Salander right from the first scene, without saying a word or even showing her face), and it doesn’t shy away from the horrible bit of the book (and no hollywood remake is going to do that).
Gah! Remaking it is a terrible idea!
Ocker3

perhaps the low literacy rate in ’1st world’ countries is to blame for this? Australia has nothing to brag about here, just like the USA and the UK. If you’re good at reading you can intergrate the original actor’s emotion into the raw text.

Some highly educated people prefer not to have to read though, which I guess I understand. I prefer sub-titled Anime, a good friend of mine who loves reading prefers dubbed Anime so she doesn’t have to watch the screen all the time.
mizkitty64

More proof that Hollywood still doesn’t have any original ideas…
Halloween Jack

I really can’t imagine anyone doing Lisbeth Salander justice except for Noomi Rapace. If they had to do a remake, maybe Kristen Stewart (I was pretty impressed by her as Joan Jett in The Runaways), but of course they don’t have to, and there are a lot of elements (such as the Vangers who were Nazis back in WWII) that would be difficult to Americanize.
- sumi
  
  “…and there are a lot of elements (such as the Vangers who were Nazis back in WWII) that would be difficult to Americanize.”
  
  The BBC produced Wallander, from the novels by Swedish author Henning Mankell, leaving the stories set in Sweden. Everyone just spoke English – and with no silly accents. Let the Brits do the remake, they could get it right!
  - crufty
    
    The british remakes of “Wallander” were indeed quite decent, but since the original swedish episodes were great, it still doesn’t solve the puzzle of why the remakes were needed in the first place.
    
    Is it really that difficult for an english speaking audience to watch ‘foreign’ movies/tv series with subtitles?
    - sumi
      
      “Is it really that difficult for an english speaking audience to watch ‘foreign’ movies/tv series with subtitles?”
      
      It is if you have wonky vision. But my point was that decent remakes can be done, just not in an Americanized way. The remake of La Femme Nikita comes to mind – a travesty!
Anonymous

Daniel Craig as Blomkvist is okay. How about Kristen Bell (of Veronica Mars fame) as the American Lisbeth Salander. She is short, skinny, can be nasty and therefore would be perfect.
HahTse

I was sceptical of her at first, but as soon as I saw her in the movie, I was SURE that this is Lisbeth – and no one else.

Now I am highly sceptical of the remake – and I really hope I will be proven wrong again.
Anonymous

I read that she turned down the opportuniy on the Die Antwoord fansite: http://www.dieantwoordzeflings.com/en/news/yo-landi-turned-down-hollywood-acting-opportunity/
Anonymous

Come on guys, don’t be skeptical, other Hollywood remakes of foreign material always turned out as fine pieces of cinematography faithful to the spirit of the original…

The Wicker Man, Edge of Darkness, Eye of the Beholder, The Departed, pure jewels…

(Warning! Sarcasm might be cleverly hiding into this comment.)
CLe4R

Thank god. Please let Die Antwoord fade into rap-rock obscurity like so many others before them.
CLe4R

One more thing: why remake a film that is only going to be a year or so old at release?
- Keith
  
  It’s foreign and Americans don’t watch foreign movies, as they often have too many subtitles and not enough explosions.
weatherman

I read this book before it started getting quite so much attention and I have to say that I found it really mediocre and quite the opposite of the pro-feminist book that it is touted as being. The whole book is about a man who sleeps with every female character introduced, including the “fem-hacker/ass-buster” who supposedly looks like a teenage boy. The original title of the book “Men Who Hate Women” much more aptly describes the protagonist and probably the author as well.
- Anonymous
  
  weatherman I think you missed the point, pehaps because you are fixated on number of sexual partners or some more traditional vision of how relationships are supposed to work (or what people are supposed to look like in those relationships – i.e. women who “look like a teenage boy” may still want to have a relationship). You seemed to have missed the nature of the relationships, especially the question of equality and respect. Unless you think sleeping with someone is in itself a sign of disrespect?
  
  Regardless of who he sleeps with Blomkvist has healthy relationships with women, he doesn’t coerce them, he respects their choices, he is pretty much the only person who treats them as full autonomous human beings.
  
  This was one of the best things about the book, largely left out in the current movie, which will still likely be better than the US remake.
  
  I don’t see how you could look at the depiction of female characters in the book and conclude the author hates women. The title of the book “men who hate women” is about the power of those men in society at large. While not at all propagandistic, the book is simultaneously a great crime novel and one that does not degrade women for the sake of the plot like so many crime novels do.
  
  Instead the plot becomes about how society allows & perpetuate’s women’s abuse – it shows the power of men who hate women, and society’s complicity in allowing them to express their hatred. Such a far cry from crime novels that rely on women’s suffering as a sort of natural, expected part of modern life, or someting that inspires a male investigator to philosophical musings or world-weary conclusions about “some people.”
- Anonymous
  
  It’s okay, the author is dead. Feel better now?
- crosberg
  
  Wow, that’s not at all what I got out of the book, even as an avowed feminist. Have you read the other two? Do you know much about the author himself? The story of his life (and untimely death, its ramifications for his [female]partner of several decades, etc) is rather fascinating, and the other two books in particular flesh out his ideas, opinions, and the general attitude he has. Overall, I think the point was that too many women are abused by the men in their lives, and that Lisbeth in particular, but many of the female characters in the series in general spend much of their time defending themselves, taking their power back, and kicking the asses of the males around them. I would really suggest you read the second two books, I think your opinion will be changed.
  - weatherman
    
    I know enough about the author to know that he basically presented himself as the protagonist in Dragon Tattoo. I guess I didn’t read empowerment in the Lisbeth character, in part because I found her character pretty flat and ancillary to the main plot of the book. Perhaps it should have been titled The Man Who Sleeps With the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (And Some Others Too).
    
    I suspect the other books do a better job of presenting Lisbeth as a real person and not just as a one-dimensional abuse victim, but given how much I disliked the first book I don’t think I’ll be reading the others.
    - crosberg
      
      Totally fair point! I agree that the first book fell flat with Lisbeth, but the second and third in particular were far more about her, and less about Kalle Blomkvist. By the end of the third book I was completely uninterested in him as a character (due to nothing but his own behavior) and from what I read of the author, he was actually with the same woman nearly exclusively for decades, and she’s now fighting for control of his estate, which was granted to his father and brother since he died suddenly and left no will and they were not actually married. Maybe once the movies hit the US you’d be more interested in them? Noomi Rapace really did a great job of bringing her character to life.
Anonymous

Why are there plans to remake a movie that was just released? The first version is less than a year and a half old, and I sincerely doubt that anyone could beat Noomi Rapace’s brilliant depiction of Lisbeth Salander…to be frank, she also did a better job of depicting the character physically than Vi$$er could, with that coloring. What’s the point in pulling a “Let the Right One In” on this one?
Lobster

A dollar sign is not a letter.
Paulie & Pauline

The photo of Yo-Landi looks like a Clayton Cubitt (Seige) joint.
lasttide

Maybe it’s just me, but I tend to prefer when the stars of films actually have a background in acting, hopefully with real training. The current trend in Hollywood to cast entirely based on looks has led to the worst decade in film history, in terms of acting, since the 30′s (when silent film stars largely failed to make it when they were forced to actually speak).
crosberg

I think my big question is the same as @CLe4R’s: why are they remaking a movie that’s less than 18 months old? If @Keith is right and it’s to “Americanize” it than why would a South African be in the running for the lead role?
tyger11

Whether you like Die-Antwoord or not has nothing to do with whether Yo-Landi would be a good actress or not.

Certainly _stylistically_, if she kept her current look for the film, or something like it, that would fit with the character (at least as far as the original film, which I’ve seen. I’ve not yet read the books).

The movie based on the SECOND book, The Girl Who Played with Fire, was released last year according to imdb, as was the movie based on the THIRD book, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest. No U.S. release date listed at imdb for the third movie, but the second has a July 9th date for NYC.

I’m sure the point of remaking the film is to remake it in English, since subtitled movies almost never see wide release in the U.S. If they do it right, I see no problem with doing an English-language version.
Anonymous

Miss Vi$$er has appeal. But I keep thinking Claire Foy, the really fine actress who played the title character in last year’s phenomenal Brit miniseries Little Dorrit. I think she fits the physical type, and I can’t help but think
she can inhabit the hell out of Salander.
-Larry McG
Anonymous

From Wikipedia:

Twilight’s Kristen Stewart and Juno’s Ellen Page have expressed interest to play Lisbeth Salande

Two of the worst actresses currently working in Hollywood. Great.
hassenpfeffer

Why does this group get so much love on BB?