Claire Foy confirmed as new Lizbeth Salander for latest Girl thriller

The Crown star Claire Foy has been confirmed as the new Lizbeth Salander for The Girl In The Spider's Web.

The British actress, who plays the young Queen Elizabeth II on TV, has long been rumored as the frontrunner for the role, and her casting was made official on Friday (15Sep17), according to Deadline.

The Emmy-nominee will pick up where Noomi Rapace and Rooney Mara left off, playing late author Stieg Larsson's tech expert in the next installment of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo series for Sony Pictures’ Millennium franchise.

Don't Breathe director Fede Alvarez will take charge of the film, which is slated for an October, 2018 release.

"I couldn’t be more thrilled about Claire taking the reins of the iconic Lisbeth Salander," he says. "Claire is an incredible, rare talent who will inject a new and exciting life into Lisbeth. I can’t wait to bring this new story to a worldwide audience, with Claire Foy at its center."

The Girl in the Spider's Web story was completed by David Lagercrantz after Larsson's death, and his thriller has been adapted for the big screen by Steven Knight, Alvarez, and Jay Basu.

It will be the first film inspired by the book series to be adapted in English first - Larsson's trilogy was initially turned into three Swedish movies, each starring Noomi Rapace as Salander and the late Michael Nyqvist. Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig took over the lead roles in director David Fincher's 2011 Hollywood remake, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Foy, who is among the favorites to pick up an Emmy Award on Sunday (17Sep17) for her role in The Crown, has just wrapped work on Steven Soderbergh’s Unsane and she'll also star opposite Ryan Gosling in director Damien Chazelle's Neil Armstrong biopic First Man.