After three film adaptations of the popular video game series Tomb Raider, Amazon wants to take a turn bringing the property to a TV series. The company has reportedly tapped Emmy-winning showrunner Phoebe Waller-Bridge to help bring the game’s adventurous world to the small screen.
Waller-Bridge will be a scriptwriter and executive producer on the series, which is still in development, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Waller-Bridge, who’s developing the show as part of a renewed deal with Amazon, will reportedly not star in the series. It’s unclear who will take the lead role as Lara Croft, the treasure-hunting adventurer played by Angelina Jolie in the first 2001 film adaptation and its 2003 sequel, then by Alicia Vikander in the 2018 film reboot.
Tomb Raider would add to a small, but increasingly popular slate of programming for Amazon’s Prime Video service, which includes superhero hits The Boys and Invincible and the lavishly expensive Rings of Power, a prequel to The Lord of the Rings series. The lack of a wide library of well-known original programs has meant that Prime Video sometimes gets lost in the discussion over the so-called streaming wars, with Netflix, HBO Max and Disney Plus often dominating the conversation.
Waller-Bridge won a string of awards for her BBC series Fleabag, including three Emmys, two Golden Globes and a British Academy Television Award. She was the showrunner and head writer on Killing Eve in its first season and received a writing credit on the most recent James Bond film, No Time to Die.
Tomb Raider rose to prominence in the ’90s after several popular games on the Sony PlayStation consoles. A 2013 reboot kicked off a popular trilogy of games, but studio Square Enix sold the rights to the Tomb Raider franchise last year, which were picked up in December by Amazon with plans to publish the next game at a future date.
Amazon didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
