Alicia Vikander is no longer Lara Croft as new Tomb Raider movie reboot planned-GameCentral-Entertainment – Metro

Alicia Vikander is now an ex-Lara Croft (pic: AP)

MGM has lost the rights to make Tomb Raider films, so everything from the last movie is being shelved – included its star.

The 2018 Tomb Raider movie is not going to get a sequel and Alicia Vikander will not return as Lara Croft, as MGM lose the licence to make more films and the rights are shopped around Hollywood.

Although it was only a minor hit, the 2018 film was profitable and there has been off and on talk of a sequel for years now.

However, film company MGM (which is now owned by Amazon) had to start making the new movie by May or it the lost the rights. Since they didn’t, new Tomb Raider owner Embracer Group is free to sell the licence to someone else.

Earlier this May, the Tomb Raider franchise as a whole was sold by Square Enix to Embracer Group for a paltry $300 million, along with developers Crystal Dynamics and Eidos-Montréal and all their other IPs.

The figure is bafflingly small given the last Tomb Raider movie had a budget of $94 million, and that’s before marketing costs – which are generally the same amount again.

The situation got more difficult to understand when Eidos-Montréal co-founder Stephane D’Astous recently implied that Square Enix sold off the studios to make themselves more attractive as an acquisition for Sony – despite Lara Croft at one time being the de facto PlayStation mascot.

The deal makes no sense on any level, but it’s certainly good news for Embracer Group who now get to sell the film rights to someone else. They’ll probably get a significant amount for it too, given that video game movies have finally started to gain traction with films such as Sonic The Hedgehog and Uncharted.

According to TheWrap, a number of different movie studios have entered a bidding war for the rights, but Alicia Vikander is no longer attached and neither is the previous director – so the new film will be a complete reboot, again.

It’s been a rough time for Tomb Raider lately. There hasn’t been a new game since 2018’s Shadow Of The Tomb Raider and nothing has been seen of the next game, which is not expected to be released any time soon.

The last movie was inspired by the 2013 game reboot, so it’s possible the new film could have the same relationship with the new game. Since we know nothing about that though, it’s impossible to say what that will mean in practice.

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