If you were waiting for a British actress to play Lara Croft in a Tomb Raider movie, you’re going to have to keep waiting. While there was word that Brit and Force Awakens star Daisy Ridley was up for the role, THR now reports that Swedish actress and Oscar-winner Alicia Vikander will be the one raiding tombs.
Per THR, “the movie project, which has Roar Uthaug (The Wave) on board to direct, will tell the story of a young and untested Croft fighting to survive her first adventure.” So it sounds like they’ll be going along a similar plot line for the 2013 reboot of the video game franchise (also named “Tomb Raider”) which saw a young Lara stranded on an island, feeling really bad about the first time she had to kill an animal for food, and then proceeding to murder countless bad guys over the course of the game.
Vikander getting her own franchise was really just a matter of “when” after her breakthrough 2015, and Tomb Raider has the makings to be a great one if they style it as a female Indiana Jones (meanwhile, Sony can’t seem to figure out what the hell they’re doing with Uncharted, which would be the only real competition to either adventuring franchise). That being said, we’ve gotten two Tomb Raider movies thus far and they’ve both been awful. And it’s not like Angelina Jolie is a slouch when it comes to the acting department.
Hopefully, MGM and Warner Bros can learn from the mistake of those two films and give this franchise the boost it needs. Uthaug created a solid action film with The Wave, so he’s definitely got the directing chops, and with a talented actress like Vikander in the lead, Tomb Raider is worth keeping on our radar.
Here’s the trailer for the 2013 game:
