Director Ben Wheatley has explained why his Tomb Raider sequel “fell apart”.

The Free Fire filmmaker signed up to direct Alicia Vikander as Lara Croft in the follow-up to Roar Uthaug’s 2018 action-adventure but he ultimately dropped out due to multiple delays.

Opening up about what happened to the sequel, Wheatley told Total Film magazine, “Basically, they got stuffed by COVID-19. We were really close to doing it, and then it all just fell apart, as everything did.”

Wheatley signed on to direct the sequel in late 2019 and his plan to shoot the film in 2020 was derailed by the pandemic. In January 2021, it was announced that Lovecraft Country’s Misha Green had replaced Wheatley, who had moved on to Meg 2: The Trench, but the project was ultimately scrapped when MGM lost the rights to the video game in 2022.

Vikander told Variety in May that she was crushed when the sequel fell through.

“I mean, I thought we were very much (good to go); we had a director and writer,” she shared. “But yeah, for me, that was another one of those childhood dreams – to portray an action character was awesome, and beyond what I ever thought I would do.”

Phoebe Waller-Bridge is currently developing a Tomb Raider TV series for Amazon Studios.

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