Amazon’s upcoming live-action Tomb Raider series is set to revamp the beloved gaming franchise, with the show’s production studio Story Kitchen outlining ambitious plans to form an interconnected game and TV series universe.
As spotted on Story Kitchen’s website, the Tomb Raider series is set to “reinvent the franchise on a massive scale” while “interconnecting a new live-action television series and video games into a unified storytelling universe”. The show will be made in partnership with Amazon MGM studios, and the creator of the iconic game series, Crystal Dynamics.
Following reports of cancellation earlier this year, Amazon announced the production start date of 2026 for the live-action Tomb Raider series, tapping Game of Thrones’ Sophie Turner as the face of the iconic archaeologist. Fleabag’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge will serve as co-showrunner on the project alongside Chad Hodge, with Jonathan Van Tulleken (Shōgun) serving as both director and executive producer.
With the announcement of an interconnected universe, it will be interesting to see how the upcoming show will connect to the games, with a new unannounced entry being developed by Crystal Dynamics using Unreal Engine 5. While details on the title remain scarce, this new reveal of a shared universe likely points to a reboot over a sequel, and may even open up the possibility of the new game’s Lara Croft being modelled after Sophie Turner.
This also raises the question whether the storylines of the series and the video games will mix, as if that’s the case, this might divide the fan base, as not everyone will be willing to sit through a series just to get the full picture of what happens in the games, and vice versa.
As it stands, information on both titles is simply too scarce to form any solid opinions for now, but interconnect story concerns aside, possibly being able to explore tombs in-game as the legendary Sansa Stark, or watch her commanding presence on-screen, does sound like an interesting prospect.
Kevin is a reformed PC Master Race gamer with a penchant for franchise “duds” like Darksiders III and Dead Space 3. He has made it his life-long mission to play every single major game release – lest his wallet dies trying.
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Joey Leong
