Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft animated series is raiding onto Netflix later this year

Netflix has released a trailer and confirmed a release date for Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft, an animated series set in the continuity of the Tomb Raider video game Survivor trilogy (comprising of Tomb Raider (2013), Rise of the Tomb Raider and Shadow of the Tomb Raider). Despite being set after these games, Camilla Luddington, the voice actress for Lara Croft in the trilogy, has been recast with Hayley Atwell of Captain America and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One fame in this series.

The teaser trailer for the Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft series is fairly brief, but gives a good sense of the globe-trotting, over-the-top action we can expect from the show. This includes Lara jumping out of a plane, riding a motorcycle and hopping across a pool of lava atop floating debris. Going the animated route is not a bad idea for this franchise, and should enable them to depict stylish and over-the-top stunts which would be impractical or dangerous to do in live-action.

Despite the Embracer Group promising multiple transmedia spin-offs of the properties it had acquired from Square Enix back in 2022, The Legend of Lara Croft was actually already in production at that point. Future Tomb Raider films appear to be in limbo, with a sequel to the 2018 movie having been shelved. It isn’t clear why Camilla Luddington wasn’t invited to voice Lara in the series, especially considering that Earl Baylon will be reprising his role from the games as Jonah Maiava. Presumably Atwell’s name carries a bit more star power.

Regardless, this show looks pretty cool, and we will hopefully get to see more footage as the show nears its release. It should be enough to tide fans over as we await Crystal Dynamics’ next Tomb Raider game, which is being made in Unreal Engine 5. Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft will be available to stream on Netflix from October 10th 2024.