History has shown that video game adaptations don’t need to be completely beholden to the source material in order to thrive and succeed, but it often helps exponentially as the reactions to this year’s Mortal Kombat reboot made abundantly clear.
As part of the platform’s vast expansion into the genre that’s seen dozens of properties acquired and placed into active development, Netflix announced at the end of January that Tomb Raider was getting an anime-inspired series. Things fell silent after that, but the last few weeks have brought a bounty of new information.
Hayley Atwell was confirmed to be voicing Lara Croft in September, before new additions to the cast were revealed earlier this week. In an update provided to the official Tomb Raider YouTube channel, writer and executive producer Tasha Huo revealed that the show’s timeline bridges the gap between the original and rebooted games.
“The Tomb Raider anime series from Legendary and Netflix will provide fans like you, and me, around the world with some of the first steps toward unifying the Tomb Raider timelines, as we transition beyond the Survivor Trilogy and start to follow Lara’s journey leading up to the first steps of that first Tomb Raider game.”
Fans will be happy to hear that the project picks up after Shadow of the Tomb Raider but before 1996’s original Tomb Raider, meaning that we won’t be getting any sort of origin story or long-winded explanations as to who Lara is and why she does what she does, so we can dive straight into the action from the very first episode.