The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is an upcoming Swedish/American/German/British film adaptation of the novel of the same name (Swedish Original Title: Män som hatar kvinnor, “Men Who Hate Women”) by the late Swedish author/journalist Stieg Larsson, the first book in his “Millennium series”, produced by BBC Films, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures and Yellow Bird Films for Columbia Pictures and Relativity Media, and Optimum Releasing in the UK, directed by David Fincher.

Plot
Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist), an investigative journalist with the magazine Millennium, loses a libel case against industrialist Hans-Erik Wennerström (Stefan Sauk), and is sentenced to three months in prison. Blomkvist is under covert surveillance by Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), a troubled but brilliant 24-year-old hacker from a security firm. She delivers her report on him to Dirch Frode (Ingvar Hirdwall), a lawyer for the powerful Vanger Group.

Blomkvist is then invited to a meeting with industrialist Henrik Vanger (Sven-Bertil Taube), who hires him to investigate the disappearance of his niece, Harriet, who vanished on Children’s Day in 1966. Henrik believes a member of his own family is responsible for her murder.

Meanwhile, Lisbeth’s probationary guardian is incapacitated by a stroke, and she is introduced to his successor: a lawyer named Bjurman (Peter Andersson), who takes control over her finances. One night, she asks for money to replace her computer. Bjurman, a sexual sadist, forces Lisbeth to perform oral sex on him in exchange for a fraction of the money she needs. Bjurman eventually rapes Lisbeth, who secretly videotapes the attack, and later returns to his apartment. After torturing Bjurman, she blackmails him into allowing her to regain access to her own finances and to terminate his guardianship over her in a year’s time. She then hacks into Blomkvist’s computer once again to monitor him.
Blomkvist moves on to the Vanger estate and learns that Henrik’s three brothers were all members of the Swedish Nazi Party. Harriet’s father, Gottfried, was an abusive alcoholic who drowned the year before his daughter’s disappearance. Inside Harriet’s Bible, Blomkvist finds a list of five names alongside what appear to be phone numbers. Police Inspector Morell (Björn Granath) informs him that his original investigation was unable to decipher them. Using photographs taken during the Children’s Day parade, Blomkvist learns that Harriet saw someone that day who may have been her killer. After hacking into his computer, Lisbeth finds and decodes the numeric clues: the numbers relate to verses from the Book of Leviticus concerning divine retribution.

Upon discovering that his computer has been hacked, Blomkvist is directed by Dirch Frode to Lisbeth’s apartment. He convinces her to help him with the case, and they soon find themselves on the trail of a serial killer whose crimes stretch back to 1949 in towns all over Sweden. Lisbeth finds herself attracted to Blomkvist, and they eventually become lovers.
At a meeting with the Vanger family, during which he is urged to abandon the case, Blomqvist notices Harriet’s cousin Cecilia (Marika Lagercrantz) wearing Harriet’s necklace. Cecilia asserts that she inherited it from her sister, Anita. Blomkvist then realizes that the indistinct photo Henrik had given him of Harriet is actually that of Anita. Sometime later, while jogging in the woods, he is shot at by an unknown gunman.

The following day, Inspector Morell reveals that a set of initials from Harriet’s diary match the name of a woman who had worked for Gottfried Vanger. As the women all had Jewish names, Blomkvist and Lisbeth believe their murders were motivated by anti-Semitism. They suspect the reclusive Harald Vanger (Gösta Bredefeldt) to be the culprit, as the two other Vanger brothers had died by the time she disappeared. Lisbeth searches through Vanger’s business records to trace Harald to the crime scenes, while Blomkvist breaks into his house. There, Harald confronts Blomkvist, but Harriet’s brother, Martin (Peter Haber), shows up and instead escorts Blomkvist to his home. When Blomkvist reveals what he has uncovered, Martin drugs him. In the meantime, Lisbeth discovers that Martin and his father were responsible for the murders, finding a picture with the two of them in it — Martin’s blue sweater matches the one on the man that scared Harriet in another Children’s Day parade photo. She returns to the cottage to find Blomkvist missing.

Blomkvist wakes to find himself bound in Martin’s cellar. Martin confesses to decades of rape and murder, but denies killing Harriet. While he is garroting Blomkvist, Lisbeth appears and attacks the killer with a golf club. While she frees Blomkvist, Martin flees in his car. Lisbeth gives chase on her motorcycle. Martin clips a truck and his car rolls down an embankment. When Lisbeth arrives at the wreck, he pleads for help, but she leaves him to die when the car catches fire. In a flashback sequence, a young Lisbeth splashes gasoline in the face of a man sitting in a car, and then ignites it while she watches him burn.
Blomkvist later meets with Henrik and Morell to inform them that Martin did not kill Harriet. Returning to his cottage, he finds a note from Lisbeth, revealing Harriet’s whereabouts. Blomkvist flies to Australia and discovers Harriet living under her dead cousin’s name. He returns her to Sweden to be reunited with Henrik. In his office, she reveals that she killed her father, who, along with Martin, had been sexually abusing her. Fearing for her life when she saw Martin at the Children’s Day parade, she fled the estate with Anita’s help.

In the epilogue, Lisbeth visits Blomkvist in prison and furnishes him with secret financial records that reveal Wennerström’s complicity in drug trafficking and black market arms dealing, which is more incriminating than his previous evidence against him. He publishes a new story on Wennerström, who subsequently kills himself, and launches himself and Millennium to national prominence. Lisbeth hacks into Wennerström’s off-shore bank account, steals millions of kroner, and travels to the Cayman Islands.