Two and a half years ago, it was announced that KILL LIST director Ben Wheatley and EX MACHINA star Alicia Vikander would be teaming up for a creature feature called FREAKSHIFT, which Wheatley enticingly described as being about "women with shotguns fighting giant crabs." Unfortunately, FREAKSHIFT has still never made it into production… so in the meantime, Wheatley and Vikander will be working together on a different project. A sequel to the 2018 TOMB RAIDER reboot that starred Vikander as video game heroine Lara Croft.
Wheatley will be directing the TOMB RAIDER sequel, working from a screenplay written by his frequent collaborator Amy Jump. The previous Wheatley/Jump team-ups are KILL LIST, SIGHTSEERS, A FIELD IN ENGLAND, HIGH RISE, and FREE FIRE. Jump and Wheatley also wrote FREAKSHIFT together, and I'm remaining hopeful that we'll get to see that movie someday.
No details on the TOMB RAIDER sequel's plot have been revealed, but MGM has announced a release date: March 19, 2021.
TOMB RAIDER 2 (as we'll call it for now) is expected to start filming early next year. Elizabeth Cantillon is producing the film with Graham King of GK Films.
I think it's awesome that MGM has chosen genre regular Wheatley to direct the sequel. Vikander's first TOMB RAIDER was directed by COLD PREY's Roar Uthaug, which is another hiring I was impressed by.
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