Last November, Sophie Turner landed the role of Lara Croft and was officially in talks to star in Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s reboot. Additionally, recently exited Amazon TV head Jen Salke stated that ‘Tomb Raider’ would likely begin filming early 2025.
Here’s a source (via PC Gamer) now saying that ‘Tomb Raider’ is "not going ahead", while an additional source flatly confirms the project is "dead." Neither Prime Video nor Waller-Bridge's representatives have commented.
Was this ever a good idea? Did Amazon/MGM really want to go down this path? It looks as though they might have finally realized that the whole project was a misguided one. Angelina Jolie popularized Croft on the big screen in the aughts, but there have been so many hurdles to Waller-Bridge’s iteration, including fan backlash, that it was bound to get canned.
Waller-Bridge (“Fleabag”), who is “obsessed” and “grew up playing Tomb Raider,” was not only supposed to executive produce the series, but was going to write all of the episodes, and additionally direct a handful of them.
One of Salke’s most notable decisions, while chief of Amazon/MGM, was the $20M-per-year deal she gave Waller-Bridge in 2019, which has so far yielded a total of zero movies and shows. Not just that, but the deal was bafflingly re-upped three years later, and then it was re-upped again right before Salke’s exit. However, this time around, Waller-Bridges’ contract has been converted from an exclusive overall deal to a nonexclusive first look, and “for significantly less” money.
Salke recently told Variety that she has no regrets about the overall deal with Waller-Bridge, and that we should consider all the money that’s been dished out to her as more of a holding deal": “When we look at a long-term commitment to a creator like Phoebe — we’re so happy now that we retained her…”
Considering how much time and money have been wasted on “Tomb Raider,” I don’t think anybody’s happy about it turned out.