Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft is bringing the iconic video game heroine back to our screens once again, but this time through the medium of animation. Video game adaptations have become a hot commodity in recent years. What was once considered to be a “cursed” venture by Hollywood has become the new go-to as comic book movies are beginning to repair themselves after a turbulent past few years. While shows like HBO’s The Last of Us and Prime Video’s Fallout have finally figured out how to adapt a video game into a live-action setting, animated adaptations have been flourishing for years.
MovieWeb spoke with Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft’s creator and showrunner Tasha Huo about how she brought the beloved video game character to life in the new series. During our discussion, we asked Huo why she chose to adapt the beloved Tomb Raider games into an animated series (when past versions starring Angelina Jolie and Alicia Vikander had settled on live-action). Huo said that animation allows creators to go bigger with the scope of their adaptations, not just because of the freedom provided by the medium, but because of their smaller budgets. She explained:
“Creatively, one of the things is that it allows you to go as big as the Tomb Raider games go, with nowhere near the budget it would require if it was a live-action show.
I think animation allows for creators like myself, who are genuine fans of the series, to do their thing
.”
“It allows us to have our playground,” continued Huo, “that we know and love as fans, because it’s not as much of a risk, financially, right? It’s much more affordable to make, and, because they’re now being made by fans, they’re really good. And so now, more and more people are like, ‘I want to do that! I wanna follow in the heels of Arcane and Castlevania,’ right?”
Netflix Is Dominating With Animated Video Game Adaptations
Years before HBO cracked the live-action code with The Last of Us, Netflix had already proven itself as the go-to place for animated video game adaptations. Alongside the new series Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft, the streamer’s back catalog of animated gaming adaptations is unmatched. Netflix’s first (and arguably still their best) animated video game series was Castlevania, which was released in 2017. Based on the iconic Konami gaming franchise, Netflix’s show tells a new story set within the vampiric world of the games. Castlevania ran for four seasons, and currently continues with its new spin-off, Castlevania: Nocturne.
Two of the streamer’s biggest animated series are Arcane (based on League of Legends) and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (based on Cyberpunk 2077). As well as being beloved by fans, both shows dominated during their respective awards seasons. Arcane took home a stunning four Primetime Emmys in 2022, including Outstanding Animated Program. Meanwhile, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners — which started out as a second-thought side project to help sell more copies of the video game — has become the most-popular video game anime of all-time, winning the CrunchyRoll Anime of the Year Award in 2023. So things bode well for the new Tomb Raider.
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