Warner Bros. swaps The Flash movie’s date for Tomb Raider movie reboot

The rapidly-advancing Tomb Raider movie reboot has found a director, script and star, and with those elements in place, Warner Bros. and MGM, who acquired the film rights from former holder, Paramount, have announced a release date for the anticipated movie today! The currently-untitled reboot is set to hit the big screen on March 16th, 2018.

TR - Gameplay 1If that sounds like a familiar date to you, it’s because Warner Bros. previously reserved it for their DC Extended Universe movie, The Flash. The DC flick will obviously be moved very soon though, as it wouldn’t do for Warner Bros. to be competing against themselves at the box office, especially with two major blockbuster movies. A delay for The Flash wouldn’t be terribly surprising either, considering that it had to replace its director recently. Unless it’s going to occupy the date that Warner Bros. reserved for an unspecified DC movie in October of 2018 however, shifting the movie may prove tricky when it comes to maximizing box office results, since Aquaman is already serving as the DC Extended Universe’s Summer tentpole on July 27th, 2018. There’s also the sticky wicket of Marvel booking two other prime Summer dates for two of their own superhero blockbusters that year, with Avengers: Infinity War – Part I sitting on May 4th, and Ant-Man and the Wasp occupying July 6th.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and The Danish Girl star, Alicia Vikander will star in the new Tomb Raider movie as Lara Croft, with Norwegian filmmaker, Roar Uthaug directing, from a script by Transformers: The Last Knight writer, Geneva Robertson-Dworet. Very little is known about the new Tomb Raider movie, but it’s rumoured to take after the revised direction from the most recent rebooted Tomb Raider video games, which center on a younger, less experienced Lara Croft as she endures a traumatic and desperate struggle to survive after a violent shipwreck, and subsequently begins tapping into the hidden side of her potential that would one day shape her into one of gaming’s most celebrated female icons.TR - Gameplay

The Tomb Raider video game series has collectively sold over 45 million copies of its extensive library of games to date, since the series’ inception in 1996 with the original Tomb Raider on PlayStation, Sega Saturn and PC. Since then, the Tomb Raider games have been released for not only PlayStation and Sega consoles, but also Nintendo platforms, Xbox consoles, home computers, smartphones and tablets, and even short-lived specialty platforms like the Nokia N-Gage. The series’ most recent game release, Rise of the Tomb Raider, which was released for Xbox One and Xbox 360 late last year, on PC early this year, and will release for PlayStation 4 later this year, was highly lauded and sold very well, though was criticized for its timed, poorly-communicated and pointless exclusivity to Xbox platforms when it was first announced and released.

Previously, Paramount released two Tomb Raider movies, those being 2001’s Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, and 2003’s Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life, both of which had Angelina Jolie starring as Lara Croft. While both movies were received poorly by critics, and the second one wasn’t received that well by moviegoers either, the first movie from 2001 is considered to be among the better video game-to-film adaptations, and is also credited with launching the then-little-known Angelina Jolie’s career as an A-list movie star. The second movie under-performed at the box office as well, dashing any hope for a third movie, but the original Lara Croft: Tomb Raider was very lucrative for Paramount, and was one of the studio’s top hits of that year.

Keep raiding Eggplante for all major news and updates on Tomb Raider.