Daniel Craig will try to persuade Fincher to make ‘Girl Who Played With Fire’

Hopes for “The Girl Who Played With Fire,” a potential follow-up to David Fincher’s English-language “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” slowed considerably after the first movie performed only decently at the box office.

But star Daniel Craig says he hasn’t given up on the possibility of a new installment —and in fact hopes to persuade the director to return.

“Of course I’ll embrace [the movie], especially if Fincher does it,” Craig told The Times, adding, “I’m definitely going to work on him.”

Fincher, who has a range of projects in development, has been publicly noncommittal about returning to the franchise, which follows a Swedish-language art-house hit. The director has never made a sequel in his long career.

Though well-received by critics and fans, “Dragon Tattoo,” Sony-MGM’s 2011 adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s bestseller, grossed $233 million worldwide. That’s a respectable but hardly blockbuster result for the R-rated film -- and prompted an MGM executive to say earlier this year that the company had lost a small amount of money on the film and would likely participate in a new movie only if it was made at a lower budget.

Sony has been waiting on a new “Fire” script from writer Steven Zallian; there has been no recent development movement.

Larsson’s book on which the film would be based, the second in the so-called Millennium Trilogy, centers on Craig’s Mikael Blomqvist and Rooney Mara’s Lisbeth Salander investigating a sex-trafficking ring.

Meanwhile, Craig’s latest James Bond movie, “Skyfall,” opens in three weeks. And while the actor — who after three tent-pole-sized movies in the last 16 months has no new film that has been greenlighted -- says he finds the idea of doing some independent work appealing, he’s not actively seeking it out.

“Sometimes shooting on a smaller scale, as long as things don’t blow out of proportion, is very liberating,” said the actor, who made a foray into indie drama with the Holocaust resistance film “Defiance” in 2008. “But I wouldn’t like to self-consciously go out and look for some nice small project just to get a chance to prove my acting chops. It’s like, I think I’ve … done enough of that.”

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-- Steven Zeitchik

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