Ben Wheatley was always going to seize the chance to direct a big budget Hollywood blockbuster when it came his way, but it wasn’t always supposed to be with Jason Statham’s giant shark sequel Meg 2: The Trench, with the filmmaker initially planning to craft the follow-up to Alicia Vikander’s Tomb Raider.
The Academy Award winner’s debut as Lara Croft may not have set critics on fire with its artistic merits, but a box office haul of $275 million ensured it was a franchise-in-waiting. However, Wheatley ended up dropping out when the pandemic crippled the industry, with Misha Green stepping in to both write the script and wield the megaphone.
That ended up falling apart, too, and now Amazon is planning to reboot Tomb Raider once again as a “Marvel-style universe” being orchestrated by Fleabag creator and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny star Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Does Wheatley have any sour grapes, though?
Well, according to the man himself in an interview with Total Film, he ended up getting exactly what he wanted anyway when he left one effects-heavy extravaganza in favor of another.
“Very much so. Basically, they got stuffed by COVID-19. We were really close to doing it, and then it all just fell apart, as everything did . But [The Meg 2] came across my desk, and I was like, ‘Oh.’ I didn’t even hesitate, you know? It was like Rebecca: why wouldn’t you do it?”
Meg 2: The Trench is weeks away from release, whereas Tomb Raider is but a twinkle in Waller-Bridge’s eye for the time being, so Wheatley ended up making the right call simply in terms of scratching that itch of his.