Alicia Vikander Gives ‘Tomb Raider’ Fans Hope for Sequel

The Green Knight star Alicia Vikander gave a hopeful update for anyone wishing she could play Lara Croft in a Tomb Raider movie again. Vikander, who has an Oscar for The Danish Girl, has been pushing for a chance to play the iconic video game character again ever since her Tomb Raider reboot hit theaters in 2018. The character was previously played by Angelina Jolie in the early 2000s.

In a new interview with Collider to promote The Green Knight, Vikander said that she would have said there definitely will be a Tomb Raider 2 before the coronavirus pandemic began. “And now I think it’s a yes still. It’s not greenlit, but the script is in the making. And I think everyone is excited, and I would love to revisit Lara again,” she said.

Vikander later said the script was worked on very recently. “It’s really now when the world is up and running again, and Misha is on board and she’s working on the script right now,” she said, referring to director Mischa Green. “So I’m very excited to sort of read something very soon.”

The 2018 Tomb Raider film was not a huge success in the U.S., only grossing $58.3 million domestically. However, it was a bigger hit overseas, bringing its worldwide total to $274.7 million on a $94 million budget. That was just enough to inspire Warner Bros. to give the sequel a March 19, 2021 release date. That obviously never happened as production never began because of the pandemic. Ben Wheatley (Free Fire) was hired to replace director Roar Uthaug for the sequel, but Wheatley left the project.

“The plan was for us to start making one this year, of course, due to the [pandemic] situation, that’s now very different,” Vikander said on Good Morning America in October 2020, reports Entertainment Weekly. “We’re still in discussions about it, so I hope we can probably get to it next year.”

In January, Green was hired to write and direct. She served as the showrunner and executive producer for HBO’s acclaimed series Lovecraft Country, which was recently canceled. On Jan. 25, Green confirmed she was involved in the project, tweeting that her favorite Tomb Raider games are Legend (2006), Rise of the Tomb Raider (2015), and Shadow of the Tomb Raider (2018). “Who’s as excited as I am for a [Tomb Raider movie]!?!?” she tweeted. Green later hinted that she has completed the first script, titled Tomb Raider: Obsidian.

Vikander can now be seen in theaters in David Lowery’s The Green Knight, starring Dev Patel as Sir Gawain. The script was inspired by the Arthurian story Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Vikander also stars opposite John David Washington in Beckett, a thriller about an American tourist being chased in Greece. Netflix will release the movie on Aug. 13.