By the looks of things, voicing ‘Captain Carter’ (aka the super-soldier version of Peggy) in Marvel’s What If…? has got Hayley Atwell in a voice-role mood. The actor has just bagged a major new gig: becoming the latest person to bring Tomb Raider icon Lara Croft to the screen, lending the character her voice in an animated incarnation. Back at the start of the year, it was confirmed that Netflix is working on Tomb Raider and Skull Island anime shows from Legendary Entertainment – and the Tomb Raider show just seized its biggest treasure.
While Alicia Vikander is still the main big-screen Lara Croft for now, Atwell will technically be picking up the role from Camilla Luddington, who played the character (both in voice and performance-capture) in the rebooted trilogy of video games that began with 2013’s Tomb Raider (on which the 2018 Alicia Vikander-starring movie was also based – keeping up?) That’s because Netflix’s series is set after the game trilogy’s final instalment Shadow Of The Tomb Raider, presumably following a Lara Croft who’s well in her prime of adventuring.
It’s unknown when the series is due to arrive, but the series has a showrunner in Tasha Huo (also working on The Witcher spin-off Blood Origin), and with its central character now cast, things must be moving on nicely. As for the 2018 film sequel, Ben Wheatley and Amy Jump left the project a little while ago, and the latest development had Lovecraft Country’s Misha Green in the director's chair and writing a screenplay draft – the title of which she shared on Twitter: Tomb Raider: Obsidian. Hopefully it won’t fall into any more booby traps on its way to the screen.