Amazon has confirmed its Tomb Raider live-action series for Prime Video, with Fleabag star Phoebe Waller-Bridge in place as writer and executive producer.
The series is based on the long-running Tomb Raider video game franchise, which follows the adventures of world-famous archaeologist and adventurer Lara Croft. Amazon, which is producing the show alongside Embracer-owned Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics, said Tomb Raider will premiere exclusively on Prime Video in more than 240 countries and territories worldwide, but it failed to mention a release window or who would play Lara Croft.
“If I could tell my teenage self this was happening I think she’d explode," Phoebe Waller-Bridge said. "Tomb Raider has been a huge part of my life and I feel incredibly privileged to be bringing it to television with such passionate collaborators. Lara Croft means a lot to me, as she does to many, and I can’t wait to go on this adventure. Bats ‘n all."
Last year, Phoebe Waller-Bridge said she hoped to develop something "dangerous and exciting" with the Tomb Raider TV show. "There's room to do something really quite dangerous," she said. "And if I can do something dangerous and exciting with Tomb Raider, I already have an audience of people who love Lara and hopefully will continue to. And that is a very unusual position to be in. It's the old Trojan horse."
Waller-Bridge is no stranger to the action-adventure genre thanks to scripting James Bond film No Time to Die and more recently starring in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, but she revealed her appreciation for the Tomb Raider franchise dates back even further. "My parents were very smart because they didn't actually limit me," she recalled of playing Tomb Raider. "They could sense that I was going to just game myself into the ground, and I did. I packed the PlayStation away, and I was like, 'I've got to not do that because I've got to write and read and do other stuff.' "
The Tomb Raider announcement follows Amazon’s hugely successful Fallout TV show, which was created in close collaboration with Fallout developer Bethesda. Meanwhile, Crystal Dynamics and Amazon Games are working together to develop and publish a new multiplatform Tomb Raider game. The as-yet untitled game is described as “a single-player, narrative-driven action-adventure that is an all new, next chapter to Lara Croft’s legendary explorations in the Tomb Raider franchise.” A release window has yet to be announced.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
