Funny man Stephen Merchant is the latest addition to the cast of The Girl in the Spider’s Web, the sequel to 2011 film The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
Variety reports he’ll join The Crown star Claire Foy, who’s set to play Lisbeth Salander, taking over from Rooney Mara who played her in the original film.
The new film is based on a 2015 book by David Lagercrantz, who took up the Millennium series of Swedish crime novels after the original author Stieg Larsson died in 2004. It continues the saga of Lisbeth, a young woman with a photographic memory and poor social skills, and Mikael Blomkvist, an investigative journalist and publisher of a magazine called Millennium.
Daniel Craig played Mikael originally, but has been replaced by Sverrir Gudnason for the new film. The cast also includes Blade Runner 2049′s Sylvia Hoeks, who plays Lisbeth’s twin; Claes Bang (The Square) as the villain; and Synnøve Macody Lund (Black Widows) has an undisclosed role.
Just who Stephen will be playing is also unknown. It’s unlikely to be a comic role, which means we should expect something more in line with his last dramatic role as the albino mutant Caliban in Logan than his socially inept character in Hello Ladies.
Although on second thoughts, perhaps that’s just what the Swedish thriller needs: a bit of light relief.
Are you surprised to see Stephen in this film?