Adventurers eat danger for breakfast, so it isn’t surprising that Phoebe Waller-Bridge wants her version of Lara Croft to embody that spirit. As the Fleabag creator and star continues to develop her Tomb Raider TV series for Amazon, she has shared plans to make things “dangerous and exciting”.
Speaking to Vanity Fair before the ongoing writer’s strike, the filmmaker highlighted her commitment to making the show for the general crowd and the franchise’s longtime fans.
“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.”
The upcoming show was first announced in January this year, and sees Waller-Bridge serving as scriptwriter and executive producer. No cast, director, or premiere date has been attached just yet.
Waller-Bridge’s creative vision largely stems from her appreciation for the Tomb Raider franchise. While she’s hardly a stranger to the action-adventure genre, having penned the script for No Time to Die and starring in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, the filmmaker revealed her taste for excitement dates back even further.
Recalling memories of playing the game, she said, “My parents were very smart because they didn’t actually limit me. 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.'”
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Waller-Bridge revisited the world of Tomb Raider again and found her enthusiasm for Lara Craft to be undying. It was only natural that she took up the opportunity when Amazon approached her, and it’s now up to her to shape it into reality.
“God, it literally felt like that teenager in me saying: do right by her, do right by Lara!” she enthused. “The opportunity to have, as we were talking earlier, a female action character…. Having worked on Bond and having worked as an actor on Indy, I feel like I’ve been building up to this.
“What if I could take the reins on an action franchise, with everything I’ve learned, with a character I adore, and also just bring back some of that ’90s vibe?” she continued, adding that “it’s such a wonderful feeling to think you know what to do” with such a project.
It’ll be interesting to see how Waller-Bridge’s ideas will translate to the small screen, especially with her acknowledgement of Indiana Jones and James Bond’s influence on the Lara Croft’s characterisation. The Amazon show also marks the first live-action Tomb Raider project after the 2018 movie starring Alicia Vikander.
Si Jia is a casual geek at heart – or as casual as someone with Sephiroth’s theme on her Spotify playlist can get. A fan of movies, games, and Japanese culture, Si Jia’s greatest weakness is the Steam Summer Sale. Or any Steam sale, really.
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