The basic requirements for any movie with designs on launching a franchise would be commercial success, but it was behind the scenes machinations that ended up killing off any hopes of seeing Alicia Vikander’s Tomb Raider spawn a lucrative multi-film series.
With an Academy Award-winning star in the lead and a $275 million haul at the box office, the 2018 blockbuster certainly ticked most of the boxes required to continue churning out additional installments, with a sequel officially given the green light shortly afterwards.
However, after lingering in development hell for several years and enduring a handful of false starts in the process, the plug was ultimately pulled altogether. Instead, the reboot of a an adaptation that got a sequel is getting rebooted again, this time as “a Marvel-style universe,” because apparently Hollywood has no other decent ideas.
Unsurprisingly, then, Vikander remains supremely bummed out that she won’t be raiding anymore tombs, even if she addressed the matter as diplomatically as possible when quizzed by Variety.
“I mean, I thought we were very much [good to go]; we had a director and writer. But yeah, for me, that was another one of those childhood dreams — to portray an action character was awesome, and beyond what I ever thought I would do. And I think the physical part is something that I really enjoyed. So, yeah, if another opportunity like that came again, I’ll be interested.”
Instead of Tomb Raider 2, we’re getting what’s been described by Amazon as a multimedia universe that’s going to span film, television, and video games. Given the company’s track record for both building its own IPs and failing miserable in the video game market, it’s hard to muster up a shred of excitement for even more repurposed content to come crawling down the pipeline.