Stockholm cashes in on Millennium trilogy films

Sunday, April 3rd, 2011 - 6:23 am - Entertainment Ideas

Stockholm – The production of the movies based on best- selling Swedish crime writer Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy has generated jobs and other spinoffs for Stockholm, a new study said Thursday.

Some 90 million kronor (14 million dollars) was spent on wages and services, hotels, transportation as well as rental of locations in the greater Stockholm region during the making of the trilogy, the report compiled by the Swedish-based Cloudberry group said.

The three films have been seen by some 20 million cinema goers worldwide. In addition the films have also been shown on television and on DVDs. Along with media coverage, the marketing value was estimated at some 960 million kronor, the report said.

Tourism has also been boosted. Roughly 10,000 people attend guided tours that trace venues in Stockholm used as a backdrop in the trilogy.

“We see that films create jobs and growth both locally and at a regional level,” Anders Ekegren, chairman of the regional film council for Stockholm and the Malardalen area.

The study did not include possible spinoffs from the Hollywood version of the Millennium movies, the first is set to premiere in December.

Larsson, who died of a heart attack at age 50 in 2004, scored posthumous success with his so-called Millennium Trilogy that has been translated into several languages including English and German.

He died a year before the first of the three novels, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, hit the bookstands. The trilogy has sold some 3 million copies in Sweden, a country of some 9 million, alone.

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