Hollywood studio secures movie rights for Swedish best-seller books

Mar 17, 2010, 15:57 GMT

Stockholm - Columbia Pictures has signed a movie rights deal with the the heirs of the late Swedish best-selling crime writer Stieg Larsson, reports said Wednesday.

Larsson's brother Joakim told the Norra Vasterbotten newspaper that a deal has been inked with the Hollywood studio.

'A first movie can be completed already next year,' Joakim Larsson said.

The so-called Millennium Trilogy has already been filmed in Swedish, and the rights were signed with Larsson's heirs and Yellow Bird, the report said.

Actress Naomi Rapace - who depicted troubled computer hacker Lisbeth Salander who helps investigative journalist Mikael Blomkvist in the trilogy - has in some interviews said she was not interested in re-creating her role.

Larsson, a journalist turned novelist who died of a heart attack at age 50 in 2004, has earned huge but posthumous success with the trilogy, which has been translated into several languages.

However his multi-million dollar estate is contested, after he died without a will, meaning his estate was largely inherited by his father and brother, rather than his partner of 32 years, Eva Gabrielsson.