There’s a new Lara Croft in town. After being played in movies by Angelina Jolie and Alicia Vikander, and voiced by Camilla Luddington in the Square Enix reboot trilogy of games, the famous archaeologist is getting a brand-new interpretation. Netflix, which is developing a Tomb Raider anime series with Legendary Television, has cast Hayley Atwell to voice Croft in her new adventure.
The anime series, which was first announced back in January, will pick up after the events of the highly praised video game reboot trilogy, so if you’ve been waiting for a sign to play it (or give it another go), this is it. Details of Lara Croft's anime debut are yet to come.
If Atwell’s name rings any bells, that’s because you’ve probably seen her around more than once. She became internationally famous after playing Peggy Carter, a woman who fought alongside Steve Rogers in the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Captain America: The First Avenger, and then got her own TV series, Agent Carter, which ran for two seasons.
Atwell will star in another blockbuster franchise over the next couple of years: she joined the cast of Mission: Impossible 7 and 8, which are set to premiere in 2022 and 2023. Recently, she also returned to the role of Peggy Carter, voicing the character for Marvel’s animated series What If… In the story, set in an alternate universe, Peggy was the one who became Captain America.
Tomb Raider is one of the most popular video game franchises in the world. It was first released in 1996, and along these 25 years, the franchise installments have sold over 85 million copies. The new game trilogy, which started off with Shadow of the Tomb Raider, breathed new life into the story and influenced the production of the Vikander film, as well as this new anime series. Tomb Raider will be executive produced by Tasha Huo (The Witcher: Blood Origin), who will also write, and dj2 Entertainment Founder and CEO Dmitri M. Johnson (Sonic the Hedgehog, Life is Strange). No release date has yet been confirmed:
Here's the official logline for the Tomb Raider series:
Lara Croft, one of the video game world’s most iconic adventurers, makes her anime debut in an all new series. Picking up after the events of the highly successful Tomb Raider video-game reboot trilogy, the animated series will chart the globetrotting heroine’s latest, greatest adventure. Twenty-five years after her first game appeared, Lara continues to explore new territory.