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Alicia Vikander’s ‘Tomb Raider’ Reboot Gets Release Date

By Stephen Jordan
Published on: 10:25 PST, Jul 7, 2016

The Alicia Vikander Tomb Raider movie just got a release date! Deadline reports that the Tomb Raider reboot, with Vikander as Lara Croft, is going to be released on March 16, 2018. An untitled Warner Bros. DC Comics film was originally assigned that release date, rumored to be The Flash.

This Tomb Raider reboot had been getting a lot of attention in the media, specifically due to the fact that Star Wars: The Force Awakens‘ Daisy Ridley was strongly being considered to play the lead role, Lara Croft. Ridley herself expressed some interest in it and for a while it seemed like she was going to officially get the role, but Alicia Vikander was announced as Lara Croft back in April.

Camilla Luddington, the voice actress for Lara Croft in the Tomb Raider and Rise of the Tomb Raider video games, gave Alicia Vikander her blessing a couple of weeks after she was announced. While Camilla would have loved to get the live-action role, of course, she was more than happy for Alicia.

“I feel like with any Lara Croft, someone is always taking over that role. Of course I would’ve loved to do the live-action movie version of it, but she’s Alicia and she’s amazing. So I’m excited to see her interpretation too of the game.”

Alicia Vikander will be following Angelina Jolie’s portrayal of Lara Croft in 2001’s Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and 2003’s Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life. While the first film grossed $274,703,340 at the worldwide box office, the sequel only earned $156,505,388 worldwide. Of course, there’s an extremely good chance that this new installment will be much more financially successful than its predecessors.

With the March 16, 2018, release date, the Tomb Raider reboot is not going to have very much competition during that whole month. The animated sequel Wreck-It Ralph 2 is going to be released one week prior, March 9, and that might pose somewhat of a challenge to the movie adaptation of the video game. And Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One being released on March 30 should certainly shake things up.

Alicia Vikander is also likely going to have much better material to work with than what was given to Angelina Jolie years ago. The director of the reboot, Roar Uthaug, explained how they will be taking the franchise into a new direction.

“I think making Lara Croft feel like a real human being, that’s definitely something we want to bring to the big screen as well,” Uthaug told IGN. “I think we’ll want to make people relate to Lara as a character. I’m hoping to bring some of my Norwegian sensibilities to the franchise.”

One key component in Roar Uthaug’s films makes him a pretty solid choice to direct this new Tomb Raider movie, although many will still feel that a project such as this should be in the hands of a female director. Uthaug has a history of including strong female characters into his films, not just in supporting roles, but in the leading role(s) as well.

Alicia Vikander as Lara Croft will get to portray a woman going on a journey from novice to archaeologist-adventurer into the skilled veteran fans know her to be. This is the direction that the recent Tomb Raider video game reboot took, so it should be no surprise that the live-action adaptation will pull inspiration from that same source.

“I’ve always been a fan of strong female characters,” Roar said. “and I think I’ve had strong female characters in all my previous movies, so that’s something I thought was interesting.”

Roar Uthaug’s Tomb Raider reboot, starring Alicia Vikander, is set to be released March 16, 2018.

[Photo by Jason Kempin/Getty Images for The Critics’ Choice Awards]

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Alicia Vikander Camilla Luddington
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