Two young sisters, Camilla and Lisbeth Salander, play chess at the home of their abusive father, crime lord Alexander Zalachenko.
Years later, in Stockholm, Sweden, computer programmer Frans Balder hires Lisbeth, now a vigilante hacker, to retrieve Firefall, a program he developed for the National Security Agency (NSA) that can access the world's nuclear codes.
When she misses a scheduled rendezvous with Balder, he mistakenly believes Lisbeth kept Firefall for herself and contacts Gabrielle Grane, the deputy director of the Swedish Security Service (SÄPO).
Blomkvist learns that Holtser previously worked for Lisbeth's late father, Zalachenko, and is now affiliated with the "Spiders", an international crime syndicate.
Lisbeth helps Needham escape in exchange for him escorting August to San Francisco to reunite him with his mother; she agrees to later give him Firefall.
Armed with a sniper rifle and remotely guided by Plague via computer, Needham fires through walls, eliminating Camilla's henchmen and saving August and Blomkvist.
In November 2015, The Hollywood Reporter announced that Sony Pictures Entertainment was planning to develop a new film series based on the Millennium novels, starting from the book The Girl in the Spider's Web by David Lagercrantz.
[9] Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig, who portrayed Salander and Blomkvist, respectively, in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, would not be back for the film.
[9] Steven Knight was announced to be in talks to adapt the novel, while the producers would be Scott Rudin, Amy Pascal, and Elizabeth Cantillon, along with Yellow Bird's Berna Levin, Søren Stærmose, and Ole Sondberg.
In November 2016, Variety reported that Sony was in negotiations with Fede Álvarez to direct the film, with Eli Bush as an additional producer.
[17][18][19][20][21][22][23] Principal photography began in January 2018 in Berlin,[17][24] Leipzig Airport then moved to Hamburg February 2–4, for filming at the Kattwyk Bridge;[25] and ended in April 2018, in Stockholm.
[31] In the United States and Canada, The Girl in the Spider's Web was released alongside The Grinch and Overlord, and was projected to gross $10–15 million from 2,929 theaters in its opening weekend.
The website's consensus reads: "The Girl in the Spider's Web focuses on the action elements of its source material for a less complex – and only sporadically effective – franchise reboot.
[37] Chris Nashawaty of Entertainment Weekly gave the film an overall C grade, calling it "a disappointingly safe, by-the-numbers action-thriller" that will be "a letdown for fans who once embraced Salander's bold queerness and bleak nihilism.
[43] Brian Truitt of USA Today said, "To her credit, Foy gives her a default cold demeanor and businesslike drive that is nicely upended later on when things do get personal.
"[44] Rolling Stone's Peter Travers called her "killer good" in the role for "supplying the nuance and grace notes that the too-busy script leaves out.
Club wrote that Foy gave an "interesting performance" that "splits the difference between [Rooney] Mara's mannered interpretation of the character and [Noomi] Rapace's more vulnerable work in the role".