First Look: Sophie Turner Transforms Into Lara Croft for “Tomb Raider” TV Series
Amazon’s MGM Studios is kicking into high gear when it comes to one of its most anticipated upcoming projects: a TV-series adaptation of the popular video-game property “Tomb Raider,” starring Sophie Turner as the swashbuckling archaeologist Lara Croft. To commemorate the start of the show’s production, the studio has given us our first proper look at it. And what a first look it is: it’s a photo showcasing Turner’s Lara Croft primed for her next tomb-raiding adventure.
The Show Is in Production – Here’s Our First Taste
On Jan. 15, Amazon’s MGM Studios put out a press release on its website announcing that production on its “Tomb Raider” series has begun. This same press release contains a glamor shot of Turner (“Game of Thrones,” “X-Men: Apocalypse,” “Dark Phoenix”) as an unmistakable Lara Croft.
Seriously: Amazon couldn’t have made their version of the iconic hero more recognizable. In this era of deepfakes and complex AI-generated content, it’s the kind of by-the-book IP picture liable to arouse your skepticism until you’ve verified its legitimacy. Turner’s Lara Croft is clad in the character’s signature getup: a green-blue tank top and shorts equipped with straps for holding her large knife and her handgun. On her hands are leather fingerless gloves, and her right hand is holding onto the butt of her holstered gun.
Though the view is frontal, the straps of her backpack are visible; the picture shows her from the knees up, so appraising her footwear is impossible. The only original touch is a pair of sunglasses, which are something of a shortcut trick to make a character’s coolness rating go up at least half a star.
Sophie Turner Has Worked Hard to Be Lara
In the photo, Turner’s Lara Croft looks about as fit and well-muscled as one would expect of an archaeologist in the mold of Indiana Jones. It hasn’t been easy for Turner to bring this look across: on Jan. 7, she revealed on the Julia Cunningham Show that she’s been training for “eight hours a day, five days a week, since February last year.”
This intense regimen led to the discovery of “a perpetual back problem” that she didn’t previously know she had. “I also realized,” she said, “that it’s much easier to kind of build muscle if you’ve ever worked out before in your life, which I never had. So, it’s taken me months and months and months to get into good shape.” On the bright side, however, this is the price she’s paying to play a character who should dole out more blows than Sansa Stark ever did. Looking back on her long-running, star-making, relatively less physically demanding role on “Game of Thrones,” she remarked that “I… was the one that got beat up, not the one doing the beating.”
An Overview of “Tomb Raider” Adaptations
The “Tomb Raider” video game franchise began in 1996 and is still producing new gaming entries. Amazon MGM’s TV series will be the fifth screen adaptation of “Tomb Raider” (not counting a 2007 animated web series). In 2024, Netflix premiered another animated series, “Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft,” with Hayley Atwell voicing the titular character; this show has had two seasons, and the second season’s finale came out this past Dec. 11.
In the early 2000s, there were two live-action “Tomb Raider” films – “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” (2001) and “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life” (2003) – starring Angelina Jolie as the swashbuckling protagonist. A 2018 reboot, simply titled “Tomb Raider,” saw Alicia Vikander taking over the role; this film was produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) before it became a subsidiary of Amazon, and a planned sequel was cancelled after its rights to the property expired.
In addition to Sophie Turner (who, incidentally, is the first English actor to embody the English character Lara Croft in a live-action adaptation), other stars of Amazon MGM’s forthcoming adaptation include Sigourney Weaver, Jason Isaacs, Sasha Luss, and August Wittgenstein. The series is directed by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Amazon has yet to announce a release date.
