Lara Croft’s long-awaited Tomb Raider TV series looks to have hit the buffers at Amazon, and won’t be happening, reports suggest.
It’s been two years since Amazon’s buyout of MGM ended any chance of a second Tomb Raider film featuring Alicia Vikander seeing the light of day. That project was in the works since 2019, first with Ben Wheatley in place to direct, then Misha Green. Ulitmately though, when Amazon got its hands on the iconic adventurer, it cancelled the project and began developing a live action TV show instead.
Now, a new report suggests that with the exit of Jennifer Salke as Amazon Studios’ chief, the Tomb Raider show has been scrapped too. The project is said to have been one that Salke was personally overseeing and yet, according to Puck's Matthew Belloni, there’s still no completed scripts for the project.
Bear in mind, that’s after the project has reportedly gone through two writers rooms and tens of millions of dollars in development costs.
Phoebe Waller-Bridge has been leading the project as part of her development deal with the studio. Should this report prove to be accurate (and it does come from The Daily Mail, so make of that what you will) then you have to wonder whether the Fleabag creator’s partnership with the company has much mileage left in it, as it hasn’t yielded much over the past few years.
As far as the Tomb Raider series goes, things were progressing after taking some years to finally get moving. The show received an official green light around a year ago and casting was said to be underway in October. Game Of Thrones’ Sophie Turner was said to be on the shortlist, alongside Bohemian Rhapsody's Lucy Boynton. Mackenzie Davis who most recently starred in Speak No Evil, and Emma Corrin, who featured in last year’s Deadpool & Wolverine, were also said to be in the frame.
Should this report prove to be accurate, it could be back to the drawing board for Tomb Raider.
Things look slightly better on the gaming front, with two sets of remastered games launching in the last couple of years to wide acclaim. Plus, a new Lara Croft Tomb Raider game is said to be on the way from Crystal Dynamics, although with Embracer Group’s financial troubles over the past few years (you can read more on that here), who knows how much that has affected the workflow of its many subsidiaries, including Crystal Dynamics.
Should more emerge regarding this story, we’ll let you know.
