The film rights to Tomb Raider have reverted back to GK films, meaning MGM’s planned sequel to 2018’s Tomb Raider is now dead.
With her icy calm and unflappable cool, it’s not often anybody gets one over on archaeologist, adventurer and all-round action icon, Lara Croft. Still, it appears that’s what might have happened to the soon-to-be ex-Lara Croft, Alicia Vikander.
Only last week, Vikander was still talking up the prospect of a sequel to 2018’s Tomb Raider, suggesting ‘politics’ were behind the planned sequel’s lack of progress. However, either Vikander was playing coy or perhaps even she didn’t know that the reason (or at least the latest reason) MGM hasn’t put the film into production: the studio no longer owns the rights.
Reports today (via The Hollywood Reporter) are stating that the property reverted back to GK Films last week following nine years at MGM. What’s more, bidding has already begun to find a new home for the Tomb Raider rights and the competition is said to be fierce. The competition for globally-recognised intellectual property is especially fierce these days, and action heroes don’t come much bigger than Croft, star of the series of popular and long-running games, not to mention two successful Angelina Jolie movies and the aforementioned Alicia Vikander flick that was set to relaunch a grittier, less polished version of the character upon its release back in 2018.
The bidding process has been described as a ‘feeding frenzy’ and as such, we can only imagine what kind of money might end up being shelled out to secure the rights to make more Tomb Raider films. Still, with the Alicia Vikander sequel having stalled following the pandemic, then a director change, at least this means we’ll be seeing Tomb Raider at the cinema again in the not-too distant future, even if it won’t be the Misha Green-directed film we were expecting.
We’ll bring you more on this one as we hear it.
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