When he was first approached about directing the adaptation of Stieg Larsson's novel, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Danish filmmaker Niels Arden Oplev was not interested in the job.

"One of the producers came down to Denmark and asked if I wanted to come to Sweden and do a thriller. I was like "Why? Haven't you done enough of those?" I was in the middle of doing a film about Jehovah's Witnesses called Worlds Apart and I couldn't grasp the thought of making a thriller," he says.

The producers were persistent and came back several months later with another pitch. At this point Oplev was more interested in the book, the first part of a trilogy, and with a push from his neighbour's wife he read it.

"[I] thought it was very unusual material," he says. "The thing that turned me on was the strong core of character-driven drama. As a stand-alone thriller I wouldn't have been interested," he admits.

At the centre of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist), hired to investigate the murder of a young girl that occurred 40 years ago. The victim's body was never found, and her uncle believes a member of his family might be responsible. Meanwhile, Blomkvist is unwittingly being followed by Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), a young woman tasked with digging up dirt on him during a libel case he was involved in. She became obsessed with him and continued trailing him after the case ended. The two cross paths and together are pulled into the mystery of what happened to the murdered girl.

"I felt immediately close and emotional to both of the main characters," Oplev says. "I thought this was a chance to make something that is one way really suspenseful and exciting, yet on the other side it would also be an emotional film where you would feel you're not just watching it with your brain but also your heart."

Oplev casts headstrong actors because he wants them to defend their characters. This can lead to disagreements on set between what is in the script and what ends up in the final film though.

"[There] was a scene where Lisbeth told about her past in a little monologue to Blomkvist. Noomi hated that scene. If you have a character that is closed all the way through there has to be a moment in the film where you understand why she is so closed. For Noomi it was like a wall she couldn't get over...she couldn't do the character if the character had to do that further on [in the film]. I put my mind to it and came up with a solution that was even better to the film and ultimately it became a better scene" he says.

The sequels, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest, Oplev purposely had nothing to do with.

"I said upfront that it would not be wise to have the same director on all three films...everything had to be shot in ten months and that meant I would have still been shooting when the first film had it's premiere in Scandinavia," he said. "Instead of being greedy and spreading myself thin, and do a lousy job, I thought I should limit myself and do a good job."

Grossing more than $100 million in Europe, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo went on to be the biggest film of 2009 there, and also the only Scandinavian film to earn that much money. With that success there is a planned American remake in the works. Although Oplev thinks it would be interesting to see an American version, he says he doesn't want "anything to do with it."

"They have to get up really early in the morning to shoot something that will compete with my version, so I'm not worried," he snipes. "The discussion about who will direct it and who will star in it gives my film more attention [too]."

That doesn't mean Oplev is against working on an American film, which he is currently doing, having relocated his family to New Jersey. Not one to talk about upcoming projects, all he will say is that it's "an excellent written script and is a real Hollywood film that would be supercool for me to do right now."

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is in theatres on April 16.

brian.mckechnie@citynews.rogers.com

Top image: Niels Arden Oplev on the set of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Courtesy Alliance Films.