'Tomb Raider' Sequel With Alicia Vikander Will Desecrate Some More Graves

While the Tomb Raider reboot with Alicia Vikander didn't generate much buzz, it did well-enough at the box office worldwide for MGM and Warner Bros. to go ahead with a sequel. And they've hired a new writer to get the job done. Amy Jump, who co-wrote Kill List, A Field in England, High-Rise, and more, will handle the script. Plot details are still buried deep beneath the earth, but the first film was more of a prequel, so hopefully this follow-up will cut with the world-building and make with the tomb raiding.

Deadline broke the news about the Tomb Raider sequel, including the confirmation that Amy Jump has been tasked with developing the script. Hiring Jump to work on this is both unexpected and exciting. The screenwriter, who is married to filmmaker Ben Wheatley, has specialized in co-writing the scripts for Wheatley's severely dark and twisted films. Films such as Kill List, A Field in England, High-Rise and Free Fire. I'm imagining a Tomb Raider sequel done in the same style as Kill List, and it's blowing my mind (not that I think that's what will happen here).

The previous Tomb Raider film, which was helmed by Roar Uthaug and written by Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Alastair Siddons, wasn't great, but it wasn't awful either. The winning element was Vikander, who brought a lot to the role of Lara Croft, including a mean set of abs. The biggest problem with the first film, in my humble opinion, is that it was all set-up. It wasn't really about Lara Croft being a tomb raider – it was about showing us how she became a tomb raider. That's a bit boring. The end of that film revealed that Kristin Scott Thomas's character Ana Miller was secretly evil, or something along those lines. Will Thomas return to be the sequel's big bad, or will they just ignore her entirely? We'll see!

I was under the impression that Tomb Raider was a flop, but it actually made $274 million worldwide, which is a respectable number. If this sequel manages to be a better in quality, it could be an even bigger hit.

Tomb Raider is inspired by the video game series of the same name, specifically the 2013 reboot that took a darker turn than previous incarnations. The first Tomb Raider game debuted in 1996, and went on to inspire the films Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life, both starring Angelina Jolie.