Millennium 4 – the Stieg Larsson book that never was
How much did he write?
Before he died Stieg Larsson had finished – according to most newspaper articles, I’ve read – approx. 200 pages of a script for a 4th Millennium book. He had also made outlines for a 5th and 6th book and planned a total of 10 books in the series.
Larsson died on 9 November 2004, only a brief time after having delivered the first 3 manuscripts to Nordstedts Forlag for publishing.
There seems to be a little controversy as to how far Stieg Larsson actually had come with Millennium 4, though. Just one month before his death Larsson himself wrote in an e-mail to his friend, John Henri-Holmberg:
“I can also tell you that I’m 320 pages into Salander four and hope to be ready in December. According to the synopsis it is going to be 440 pages. I guess that means it will end up being about 600 pages or so. I’m done with the beginning, the end and I have the episodes in the middle left to write.”
The Battle for the Lost Script
As you probably know – since it has been widely discussed in the press and on the Internet – the sad aftermath of Stieg Larsson’s death was an inheritance row. Stieg Larsson lived for 32 years with the architect Eva Gabrielsson. They never married, had no children and he did not leave a will. According to Swedish law Stieg Larsson’s estate was therefore inherited by his father and brother, which sparked an acrimonious dispute between them and Eva Gabrielsson who claimed that the father Erland Larsson and brother Joakim Larsson ”were never a part of our lives” and that they are unsuited to handling his estate.
There has been no direct contact between the parties in the five years since the author’s death. And if my Swedish serves me correctly, it says here in this article that Stieg Larsson’s father and brother was not present at Stieg Larsson’s funeral. (There must really have been some cold air …)
Anyway, Expo, Stieg Larsson’s workplace, owns the computer with the lost script and Expo and Larsson’s father and brother jointly own its contents – whatever they are.
However, Eva Gabrielsson currently is in possession of the computer and has so far refused to hand it over. An offer was made, at some point, by Erland and Joachim that she could have their half of her and Stieg Larsson’s apartment in Stockholm (which was co-owned by Eva and Stieg and therefore legally belongs to Stieg Larsson’s father and brother after Stieg’s death). Eva Gabrielsson refused this offer, calling it “extortion”.
There is currently an agreement between Eva and Erland and Joachim Larsson not to publish the 4th (unfinished) script. “It would be like letting someone else finish a Picasso,” Joachim Larsson, said to the Norwegian newspaper, Dagbladet, in January 2008
Recent Developments
At the time of writing (December 2009) official negotiations between the parties – Eva Gabrielsson, and Erland and Joachim Larsson – have finally commenced after 5 years of bitter dispute. The negotiations take place through their lawyers and are reportedly about giving Eva a share in the huge inheritance (about 24 million euros in royalties from the books alone).
If these negotiations, the first real talks between the two sides, are successful it could of course motivate both Eva and the Larsson family to reconsider their decision about the 4th book, but so far that is just speculation. We don’t even know the outcome of the new inheritance negotiations yet, and whether or not Eva will agree to have only a one-off amount of money and no share in future royalties from both books and movies.
The negotiations were announced publicly in the Swedish newspaper, Svenska Dagbladet, in early November 2009 but from that point on they take place behind closed doors.
Update December 2009! On 11 December 2009 Eva Gabrielsson announced that she had declined a ‘settlement’ offer of about 2 million euros from the Larsson estate. What happens now is uncertain but here are some of my speculations.
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What’s the 4th Millennium book about?
There’s precious little public information available about Millennium 4. So little in fact that about the only thing I know for sure is that the 4th takes place in Canada’s arctic frontier – or at least a part of it takes place there. More precisely the location is set to be Sachs Harbour, on Banks Island in the far, far away Canadian Northwest Territories.
Image (c) sadoway @ Flickr. Creative Commons License.
This is about as far away from civilization as you can possibly come these days and I feel it’s safe to say that Stieg wanted a complete ‘fresh start’ after the events of Millennium 3: The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest. In many ways Millennium 3 can be seen as a closure story – both for Salander and Blomkvist and their relationship. The trial is over, the bad guys are dead or in prison, the huge conspiracy related to Lisbeth’s past is unravelled, Lisbeth herself is redeemed and cleared of all accusations, and finally the pair – Sally and Micke – are renunited (sort of).
But to be honest, I think people who see Millennium 3 as a ‘natural closure’ have missed the point. Remember, the first book, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, was also a ‘closed’ story, and the next two books make up one big, continuous story in two parts. I think that feels a lot more like a start – with a Big Bang – than a ‘closure’.
In fact, the only reason we might feel forced to think of Millennium 3 as closure is, I believe, because we have no other choice. Larsson is no longer with us here on Earth and the story cannot continue. However, from what we know it was slated for a very natural continuation – and some of it would have been with a complete change of scene, as in remote Canadian frontier. Probably a wise choice, as a continuation of Swedish crime-conspiracy dramas in the 4th book, would presumably feel like a rehash of the previous books. Sally and Micke would need to move on to new, international (?) adventures, different settings, different villains, and these would have to give some room for the characters to grow both individually and in relation to each other. Otherwise the new stories would become dull.
A few titbits about book 4 – including the location – was mentioned in a 2008 Swedish documentary about the Larsson inheritance row, Updragg Granskning. You can watch the relevant part (# 2) the doc here on YouTube (it is in 6 parts). Just remember to bring your Swedish dictionary, as the programme is not subtitled.
Is the 4th book really the 5th??
A final note of interest for now: Danish producer of the Millennium movies, Søren Stærmose, said during a press briefing in Italy: that Larsson’s close friend, Kurdo Baksi, had told him – Stæremose – that the lost script is actually for the 5th book and that “Larsson had more fun writing the 5th book”. You can watch the relevant part (2) of the entire press conference (in 7 parts) over on YouTube – or below. It is in English with translation to Italian.
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And that’s it for now …!
But I promise you I will comb the net for more information and update this article as much as I can in the near future. If you know anything else about Millennium 4 or related matters, please contact me. I would appreciate that.
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Notes:
Most of the sources linked to above are Swedish articles, so you’ll have to use a translator, like Google’s, if you are not a native speaker – or a Scandinavian, like yours truly.
The other pix on this page are promoshots from the movies, which I assume I’m free to use unless I hear otherwise. Please, see my Official X-tra Disclaimer.
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See also:
You Can Kick Some … for Stieg Larsson’s Eva
Categories: Books
15 Comments » (Including 3 Discussion Threads)
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November 29th, 2009 at 11:23 PM
Thank you, Chris. This is a very good piece. Thanks also for not including “spoilers” for those of us still awaiting Book 3. It may be awhile and entail numerous negotiations but as this series appears to be so successful, I really believe one day we will see the continuation of Mikael and Sally.
Not all that familiar with European writers, do any names come to mind as a writer for hire that would be faithful to the original? After all, there have been several successful contributions to the Sherlock Holmes canon and the James Bond series.
Keep up the investigative reporting.
Rich K
November 30th, 2009 at 10:05 AM
Yes, well, there’s a topic for a whole new article!!
And you’re very welcome. I hope it didn’t spoil too much to let you know that the good guys win.
Chris
December 13th, 2009 at 9:56 AM
Good job, Chris, some interesting facts I hadn’t heard before. I do know that when I finished translating book 3, I felt so into Stieg’s style after working on the books for 11 months straight that I hallucinated I could write #4, gave it a shot, and realized after one page that I had no clue about all the things that Stieg knew backwards and forwards. Who knows if there will ever be any more Sally and Micke?
December 13th, 2009 at 10:18 AM
Whaat? You actually seriously really did that? Wow! If Stieg can have that effect on both younger and, ahm, more experienced readers then … well, I guess you just put into words what so many people who love his books actually experience.
You also give me another excuse to do a fan fic competition (or something to that effect). I’ll have to dig in for a little while and think through the details. But it’s going to be. I can feel it …
February 10th, 2010 at 10:55 PM
You know you can get book 3 from amazon.uk. I got it in Oct!
February 11th, 2010 at 1:06 PM
Como me gustaria leer un 4º de millennium. Me gustaria que algun buen escritor continuara esta historia.
June 6th, 2010 at 7:01 AM
i agree that movie 3 was not closure,
salander’s life has just now begun,
July 20th, 2010 at 10:05 PM
Yeah there should be a fourth book and more ….. I am a huge fan of the books and the movies and I think there should be more books about Lisbeth Salander . I think i’ts the best series of crime books that I have ever read and Salander is a kick ass, takes no shit form noone kind of woman.
i would love to read more kick ass action about her.
also i would love to see Salander and Blomvist get togther they would make a interesting couple
Salander’s fan Xxxxxxxx
August 7th, 2010 at 4:01 AM
Eva and the Larsson family have been squabbling over the rights to the remaining Millenium stories for quite some time — she knows the ending of the saga, but the Larssons have the rights to the ending, at least for now. The family claims they offered her a pack of money; she apparently said she wants creative control more than money, so they can’t even agree on what they’re fighting about. But the wiser heads — in the book and movie industries — know that new Millenium books and movies will make staggering amounts of money, so somehow they will convince the two squabbling parties to negotiate, or else simply bury both Eva and the Larssons in money so they shut up and go away and let the grownups do their jobs. And time is of the essence: right now the value of this intellectual property is sky-high, but it won’t always be that way (although the market will heat up again when the first US film comes out), so the squabbling parties are playing a game of chicken. But even they know that Larsson himself wanted the story told, not buried.
Apparently Larsson wrote most of Book 5, lengthy synopses for Books 4 and 6, and outlines for 7 through 10. That suggests that Book 5 is a stand-alone mystery on some issue Larsson cared about, with little connection to the loose ends from the first three books (like the Lisbeth-Micke relationship, which Larsson was probably still working out the details for). He intended for Lisbeth and Micke to be together throughout the series.
For the books: finding a great writer (presumably Swedish) to finish the stories is critical. If the synopses and outlines are a bit flimsy, the 7 stories might be shrunk down to 3-5 books, perhaps. That would rake in less money, but would ensure better quality for the dollar. Just get us to the end of the story, telling the tale Larsson wanted told, and settling the fates of the main characters.
Likewise for movies beyond Hornet’s Nest: the films might actually be easier than writing books, and much more lucrative, because directors work from synopses and outlines all the time — in fact turning a synopsis into a screenplay may be easier than converting a whole novel, which inevitably entails losing lots of detail from the book. The succeeding books will probably be filmed by the highest bidder — Hollywood, not Yellow Bird (or will Noomi and the Swedes insist on filming them too? Noomi doesn’t seem interested in revisiting Lisbeth). Again, if the material is really thin, a ten-episode string could be shrunk down to 7-8 — less revenue that way, but better quality (and a string of ten movies would probably require Fincher to hire a really young Lisbeth to ensure that she isn’t in her 40s by the time the last episode is being shot).
In the continuing series, Lisbeth will mature greatly as a person.
Amazing she is already a fully-functioning, very able adult, holding down a job, developing friendships and romances (clumsily at times), showing empathy for others. A fast learner, she now realizes that her potential makes her a phenomenon and not just a freak; she will polish her education and her social skills. Now that her worst traumas are behind her, she will decide what she wants to do in life, and with her potential she could do anything. She could use her writing skills at Millenium in one or two episodes. She is unlikely to work with the Vangers because she dislikes Harriet, and she is already getting bored with Milton Security. She will help pursue Larsson’s betes noires and possibly help battered women.
Above all, she will hunt bad guys with Micke — we know they will be chasing the black hats through the whole series, and solving mysteries is what keeps them together even when their relationship is rocky. At some point they go to Canada.
The series will clear up loose ends, possibly to include Lisbeth’s sister, the biker gang, her other brother the criminal in Tallinn, George in Grenada, Mimmi, her lawyer, Palmgren. She could face many challenges in the series: a misadventure or even a bad sparring match causes a stroke in her damaged brain, the crooked lawyer in Gibraltar could lose her money through chicanery or stupidity, or another woman like Figuerola could threaten her relationship with Micke. Look for more of Larsson’s vacation spots like Grenada, and perhaps some chess.
The stories will veer away from Lisbeth a bit — she has already been through so much in the first three books that cramming too much more drama into her life would be unrealistic. She doesn’t want to avoid adventure entirely, but she wants it on her terms and initiative — and a slower pace.
The romance between Lisbeth and Micke will probably resume, but with Lisbeth in charge and very clear-eyed about it all.
When Lisbeth fell totally crazy in love with Micke, and then saw him with Erika, it frightened her and hurt her a lot. She likes control, and she couldn’t control either her feelings or the relationship. But now she is over the hurt and the fear, she now knows that she can survive heartbreak and even get over it quickly (as the books showed), and she still craves love and affection after her love-free childhood (as her scenes with Mimmi show), in part because love boosts her disastrously low self-esteem. And even when her pain over Micke was deep, she was not celibate. She is not averse to settling down (eventually), and has enough money that she could simply dedicate herself to a relationship and to her hobbies if she chose. She will seek romance on her terms and under her control — remember her big scene with Bjurman, when she dictate the terms in minute detail.
Lisbeth and Micke will get together again. In Book 3 she felt that she wasn’t in love with him, which is good in one respect because she now fears being passionately in love and might run away again if those feelings returned; she isn’t mad at him anymore and is still attracted to him. And she “let him back into her life” and her apartment wearing…a towel. Actually she cares so much for Micke that she helped his OTHER lover, whom she despises, hunt down a stalker. Lebeau reported that Larsson intended to keep the two characters chasing the bad guys throughout the series, and not just via long-distance, emailing each other over and over, either — he exhausted that trick in books 2 and 3. By the end of all these adventures, Micke’s relationship with Lisbeth would be longer and deeper than any relationship he’s had (except for Berger who’s married). They would spend those seven books wandering all over the world to places like Canada, together day after day, adventure after adventure, book after book, and they are both okay with impulsive love-the-one-you’re-with sex (which is how their sexual relationship began)….Yep, this relationship isn’t over. Particularly since Larsson, quite clearly, knows hows how to sell a great story, and if he killed any chance of romance between the two, a lot of readers would go bananas and walk away.
The relationship between Lisbeth and Micke can’t be static over seven books, but change will go slowly, because Larsson already put them through a lot of changes in the first three books and he can only put them through so many changes before it gets ludicrous. And also because Micke is a womanizer, and because Lisbeth still likes both men and women, and knows little of romance or human relations, and hasn’t really found herself, and has no plan for the future — any romance will move slowly (although, while her psyche is shifting and taking its final form, she will be with Micke much of the time, which will have an effect on her).
Micke and Lisbeth certainly won’t repeat the love/hate/reconciliation dance again — it’s repetitive — so the next avenues could involve (in some order) friendship, romance, jealousy over someone like Figueroa (or perhaps she will find a more monogamous man/woman than Micke), separation (they might spend one book going their separate ways as they did for most of Book 2 and 3), and possibly permanent romance at the end, as she reaches age 30-something and begins to think of settling down.
They won’t necessarily marry or choose monogamy: it closes too many doors for the author, and nobody in the story is monogamous — Berger has two men openly, Micke nails anybody with a vagina, and Lisbeth can’t even limit herself to one gender (Larsson himself didn’t marry his girl either). But Micke and Lisbeth won’t split up either: that also closes too many doors, and Larsson probably wanted to keep his options open to go beyond the first ten books he envisioned. At the end of Book 10 they will be together, and perhaps he had planned to bring them to some resolution point at the end of Book 10, but with some options still open. At worst, Larsson could marry Micke off to someone like Figuerola and pair Lisbeth off with Mimmi.
All this will entail change for Micke too — he did miss her, which might be a new experience for him. Lisbeth, or somebody else, is going to give him grief about settling down and stopping the womanizing (Berger actually wants him to find the right girl). Of course he could settle with someone else. A lot will depend on Lisbeth’s changing view of Micke: at first she was madly in love with him just because he was the first man who didn’t treat her like dirt, and then she over-steered in the other direction toward hate when she saw him with Erika. Now she likes him, is attracted to him, cares about him, but is not googly-eyed over him — probably a good place for her head to be.
August 7th, 2010 at 5:04 AM
Read the last two pages of Hornet’s Nest. She no longer had “those kind of feelings” – she was no longer insanely head over heels, so it no longer hurt to see him – but she found him “fucking attractive”, she trusted him again, “she opened the door wide and let him into her life again,” (wearing nothing but a towel), and when he said he didn’t want to join her in the bathtub, “she did not know whether to be disappointed or relieved.”
Yeah, this isn’t over. She may very well have jumped him that night.
August 7th, 2010 at 7:01 PM
Thanks for all your super-great comments, hellodollyllama! I’ve posted some of it on the Millennium Forever facebook group, which hopefully will attract some more response to your proposed ending for book 3, as well as your ideas for the continuation of Lisbeth and Mikael’s relationship beyond that. I’m in between two nightwatches right now so I’m too busted in the head to really give you a response right now, but don’t worry – since I’m writing fanfiction myself (check out http://stieglarsson-forever.net if you haven’t already), I’m always interested in ideas/proposals/suggestions about the future of these characters. In fact, I’ve thoroughly missed this for a long time. There aren’t many fans who as as dedicated as you and actually go to the length of writing down and sharing these ideas, even though they may have thought about them for a long time. Thanks for adding so much great value to the site!
‘be back,
Update: As of late 2010 stieglarsson-forever.net has been discontinued
Chris
August 8th, 2010 at 7:20 AM
hellodollyllama,
That was an amazing essay, and not simply because it was wish-fulfillment for me
Thank you for taking the time to write that out and share it.
November 13th, 2010 at 9:57 PM
I’d like to see more Salander novels, even if it means that writers other than Stieg Larsson would have to do the work.
January 6th, 2011 at 4:30 PM
Thank you hellodollyllama
This is absolutely fantastic. All possible info about the books are here. Love your observations btw. Spot on. Personally I would think the story would primarily deal with the rest of Salander’s illustrious family but also other various news (opportunities? i dunno what to call it) for Blomkvist. How about terrorists? Men who hate women sound like certain extremist religious sects. Also inquiry: when MacMillan was talking about having too much money to handle I thought Salander would donate it to the same charity she did with her mother’s inheritance. But maybe the sum would be to noticable (?)
January 28th, 2011 at 7:03 AM
I hope that the heirs (whoever that turns out to be) let someone finish the series. Although there is ‘closure’ in Bk 3, there is still the tantalizing mystery of Lisbeth’s sister and all that money! And it seems that Larsson gave considerable backstory for the guy who manages the money for her… hmmm.