Stockholm - All three thriller novels by the late Swedish writer and journalist Stieg Larsson are to be released as feature films for cinema, it was announced Friday.

Swedish public broadcaster SVT said it had "given careful consideration" and would not oppose the release of two films on cinema this autumn.

Initially, SVT - one of the co-producers - had planned that only the other two films in the series were to be released on DVD, and SVT was to broadcast six 90-minute installments.

SVT said it planned to go ahead with its plans to broadcast the six installments, which would offer a lot of extra material, as of February 2010.

Larsson, who died of a heart attack at age 50 in 2004, has scored posthumous success with his 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.

The first film - based on the novel The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo - has done well at the box office in Sweden as well as Norway and Denmark.

The main characters in the trilogy include computer hacking expert Lisbeth Salander, sometimes compared to a modern day Pippi Longstocking, and journalist Mikael Blomkvist.

Larsson, who was born in northern Sweden, wrote a lot on racism and right-wing extremism. In 1995 he helped found the foundation Expo, and worked extensively with its journal that highlight these issues. (dpa)