Sophie Turner seems to have won the battle to become Lara Croft in Amazon’s new Tomb Raider series, due to begin production soon.
Amazon’s upcoming television adaption of Tomb Raider looks to have its most vital element now in place: Game Of Thrones’ Sophie Turner has reportedly won the race to play Lara Croft, one of the most iconic characters to ever emerge from the world of video games.
Turner’s appointment will see her join Angelina Jolie and Alicia Vikander as the new live action Lara, but with this adaptation being set as a TV show, Turner will get far more time to embody the role than her predecessors. A couple of weeks ago, a report surfaced which suggested that Turner was one of four actors vying for the part, with Bohemian Rhapsody's Lucy Boynton also on the shortlist. Both actors were said to be testing for the role.
Mackenzie Davis who most recently starred in Speak No Evil and Emma Corrin who featured in this year’s Deadpool & Wolverine were also said to be in the frame, but were reportedly refusing to test for the part. According to Deadline, Turner is now in final negotiations to play the role and will presumably begin collaborating with Phoebe Waller-Bridge – the upcoming series’ showrunner – to really begin fleshing out what the latest incarnation of Lara will look like.
If you’ve played plenty of the Tomb Raider games you’ll understand the potential for different directions here: earlier Tomb Raider games gave us a more seasoned, confident Lara, much like the version presented by Angelina Jolie in the brace of early 2000s films that she starred in. Later games in the series have presented a less experienced take on the character, something more akin to the Lara that Alicia Vikander gave us in the 2018 film.
Whilst you might imagine that the series might tend towards the younger take on Lara, partly based on the kind of roles that Turner has become synonymous with (such as Sansa Stark in Game Of Thrones or a younger, less experienced Jean Grey in the X-Men films), the actor’s recent turn in ITV’s Joan suggest that she is moving into a phase of her career where she can begin to play roles that foreground age and experience.
Production on the show is set to begin early next year. We’ll bring you more on this one as we hear it.
