Globe-trotting archaeologist and adventurer Lara Croft is getting a second shot at life on the big screen, following the successful reboot/revival of the Tomb Raider video game franchise a few years ago. Warner Bros. Pictures is backing the new Tomb Raider live-action film and has assembled an impressive cast for the video game adaptation; one led by Oscar-winner Alicia Vikander (Ex Machina) as Lara Croft and Walton Goggins (Vice Principals) as the film's mystery villain. Into the Badlands and Warcraft actor Daniel Wu is also playing a key role in the film, though details beyond that have yet to be revealed.

Additional details on the Tomb Raider reboot's characters should be arriving (relatively) sooner than later, now that pre-production on the project has wrapped up. This past December, it was reported that Tomb Raider would begin principal photography in locations such as the UK and South Africa, by the end of this month (that is, January 2017, at the time of writing this). We can now officially confirm that said report wasn't inaccurate, either.

It was Tomb Raider reboot director Roar Uthaug who confirmed the news himself, through his Instagram account. The photo that Uthaug posted shows an official slate for the movie (which, for now, is simply titled Tomb Raider, like the 2013 reboot of the Tomb Raider video game property), accompanied by a simple yet welcome message - "And we're off!" 

And we're off! #tombraider A photo posted by Roar Uthaug (@roaruthaug) on

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Alicia Vikander On Exploring Lara Croft For Tomb Raider

Uthuag, as it were, is an up and comer in Hollywood; being fresh off directing the critically-acclaimed foreign-langue disaster thriller, The Wave. The director is reportedly working from the Tomb Raider script draft written by Geneva Robertson-Dworet, an up and comer herself, who is also working on David Ayer's developing Suicide Squad movie spinoff, Gotham City Sirens. The film gives the Lara Croft character a cinematic origin story of sorts, to go along with the origin story that the 2013 Tomb Raider video game reboot provided for her. It's also been confirmed that Lara's search for her long-missing father is a key element of the movie reboot's narrative, but plot details beyond that have yet to be revealed.

Whereas the track record for video game movie adaptations as a whole is still an infamously poor one, the Tomb Raider film franchise has historically done well enough by itself - commercially speaking, anyway. Both of the Angelina Jolie-headlined Tomb Raider movies released in the 2000s (Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, respectively) passed $150 million at the worldwide box office. Couple that with the success of the 2013 reboot of the source video games and the upcoming Tomb Raider film reboot is in a sold position to succeed at both the global and domestic box office next year.

Who knows; given the talent involved on both sides of the camera, the Tomb Raider reboot might even turn out to be a pretty good movie. If nothing else, last year's Assassin's Creed was arguably a step in the right direction for the video game movie genre as a whole; meaning, upcoming projects like Tomb Raider and The Division (from Oscar-winning filmmaker Stephen Gaghan) are now in a position to keep that positive trend going. We will remain hopeful until proven otherwise, anyway.

NEXT: Walton Goggins' Tomb Raider Villain is 'Desperate & Angry'

Source: Roar Uthaug

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