Daniel Craig’s $232 Million Thriller He Called “Made for Adults” Is a Sleeper Hit on Global Streaming Charts

Daniel Craig was most recently seen in Queer, the A24 thriller directed by Luca Guadagnino, but one much older film from the star has returned to streaming glory years later. Craig stars alongside Rooney Mara in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, a 2011 psychological thriller following a journalist (Craig) who searches for a woman who has been missing for 40 years. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is streaming on Pluto TV in the United States, and it’s also charting in the top 10 in other countries such as Belarus and Slovenia. The film earned a “certified fresh” 86% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, and even an 86% on the audience-driven Popcornmeter. It also grossed $232 million at the box office against a $90 million budget, meaning it exceeded its break-even point.

During a 2011 interview with Collider, Craig likened The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo to older, more mature films like The Godfather, saying that one thing both movies have in common is that they’re “made for adults.” He also credited director David Fincher for making the kind of film you don’t see as often anymore, which left Craig with his hand over his mouth in shock as to what he was seeing. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was Fincher’s first film after directing The Social Network, the 2010 Oscar-winner starring Andrew Garfield and Jesse Eisenberg. It wasn’t until three years after The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo that he returned to film directing with Gone Girl, the R-rated erotic thriller starring Ben Affleck. Fincher most recently helmed The Killer (2023), the hitman film starring Michael Fassbender.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Release Date

December 21, 2011

Runtime

158 minutes

Writers

Steven Zaillian

Sequel(s)

The Girl Who Played With Fire, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest