Sony Pictures Entertainment is about to close a deal to option English-language remake rights to the Millennium Series, based on the late Swedish writer Stieg Larsson’s crime novels.

Scott Rudin was instrumental in securing the rights and is attached to produce alongside Ole Sondberg and Soren Staermose of Yellow Bird Films, the company behind the Swedish Millennium films.

The first film in that series was the smash hit The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (pictured), which went on to gross more than $100m in Europe alone and is being released in North America through Music Box. The second two entries are The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest.

Yellow Bird’s Mikael Wallen and Anni Fernandez will serve as executive producers on the English-language productions, which centre on the unique crime-solving pair Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist and investigator, and Lisbeth Salander, a punk computer hacker with a photographic memory.

“Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Series is nothing short of amazing,” Columbia co-president Doug Belgrad, who will oversee development for the studio with Elizabeth Cantillon, said. “The novels are very cinematically told, with fantastic characters and page-turning plots.”

Yellow Bird Films was represented in the deal by UTA and attorney Linda Lichter.

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