The movie rights for Tomb Raider are officially up for grabs as they have recently been lost by the Amazon-owned MGM who, until recently, held the rights for the video game adaptation. MGM produced the 2018 Tomb Raider which starred Alicia Vikander as Lara Croft and it seems their reluctance to produce a sequel has led to the studio losing the rights to the franchise.

According to a report by The Wrap, there are studios already lining up to take a crack at the Tomb Raider franchise once again. The current license has no obligation to rehire any of the cast or crew from the previous production, so it is possible we will not see Alicia Vikander reprise her role.

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The Tomb Raider films have always suffered from being quite lacklustre, and while Angelina Jolie’s portrayal of Lara Croft wasn’t terrible, the movies have never really captured the spark that is Tomb Raider. Unfortunately, the attempted 2018 reboot based on the rebooted series of video games from 2013, suffered an equal fate and while it’s certainly not the worst video game adaptation, it’s not exactly great.

While MGM was still at the helm there were plans in place to create a sequel to the 2018 release which would have been released in 2021. However, the global pandemic seems to have interfered with those plans and a sequel was never made. Ben Wheaton, the director for 2018’s Tomb Raider, stated that he was still willing to work on sequel to the film but it’s “in the mists of COVID”.

The publisher behind the video game series, Square Enix, recently sold the Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics to invest in blockchain technology. The writer for the recent rebooted trilogy has also stated that he would like to see more fun and “less father issues” in the next instalment of Tomb Raider which we know is being developed in Unreal Engine 5.

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Source: The Wrap