Amazon’s ambitious Tomb Raider series with Phoebe Waller-Bridge has apparently been canceled – despite a multi-million budget and big plans.
What began as an ambitious project with a star-studded cast now seems to have ended in a big pile of broken glass: Amazon’s planned Tomb Raider series, directed by Fleabag creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge, has apparently been scrapped.
The plan to transfer the famous video game archaeologist Lara Croft into a series format has failed, according to media reports – despite millions being invested and a top-class creative team.
Big plans, blank pages
In May 2024, Amazon MGM Studios had officially announced its intention to produce a Tomb Raider series, with Phoebe Waller-Bridge as screenwriter and executive producer.
Her involvement caused a stir in the fan community and the industry alike. After all, Waller-Bridge had proven with Fleabag and Killing Eve that she could write complex female characters with a great deal of depth. She was therefore ideally suited to breathe new life into action icon Lara Croft.
But the planned series turned out to be nothing more than an expensive experiment: After more than a year and several teams of writers, it is said that a finished script was never produced. The talk is of creative differences, of structural problems in the development process and ultimately of Amazon losing patience.
The creative process faltered, there was no clear line, no coordinated concept.
Phoebe Waller-Bridge is said to have shown great passion for the project, but according to insiders, she was unable to successfully translate her vision into a viable series format.
According to , Amazon invested tens of millions in pre-production. Money that has now literally gone up in smoke. What remains is a place on the long list of never-realized prestige projects.
Particularly bitter for Amazon: Tomb Raider was supposed to be another flagship title in the competition with Netflix, Disney+ and Co. – a strong franchise with a large fan base and global recognition. Exactly what streaming services love.
What does the end of the series mean for Tomb Raider?
For Lara Croft, the end of the series does not mean the end, at least not in the video game sector. Crystal Dynamics is still working on a new Tomb Raider game, which will be the first to be developed using the Unreal Engine 5. So here, hopes for new adventures live on, even if the TV plans are buried for the time being.
For Prime Video, on the other hand, the incident is guaranteed to raise uncomfortable questions: How can a project of such magnitude, with such a well-known brand and huge budget, fail so spectacularly without even a script?
