Revealed: The $40 Million Reason Amazon Is Making A Tomb Raider Streaming Series

The 2018 adventure movie Tomb Raider made an estimated profit of $39.6 million according to analysis of documents filed by Amazon
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, which is understood to be reviving the franchise with a new film and television series scripted by Emmy award-winning writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge.

The movie is based on the hit video game series with the same name and stars Swedish actress Alicia Vikander as globe-trotting adventurer Lara Croft. She is joined by Dominic West who plays her archaeologist father whilst Walton Goggins stars as his opposite number.

The movie rebooted the Tomb Raider series which originally hit the big screen in 2001 with Angelina Jolie in the title role. The curtain came down on it when Jolie walked away after the 2003 sequel Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life. It grossed $21.7 million on its opening weekend Stateside whilst the reboot only managed 8.3% more than that. Against all the odds it eventually made a profit thanks to a secret weapon in its arsenal.

The movie was made by MGM which chose to do much of the filming in the United Kingdom. Wilton House in Wiltshire was used for exterior shots of the Croft’s ancestral home whilst a dramatic waterfall scene was actually filmed in Lee Valley outside London at a white-water slalom center that had been built for the 2012 Summer Olympics. The shooting location put the film’s finances in the spotlight.

Movie budgets are usually kept a closely-guarded secret as studios tend to absorb the cost of individual pictures in their overall expenses. However, the costs of movies made in the UK are consolidated in single production companies which file publicly-available financial statements. This helps them benefit from the government’s Film Tax Relief scheme which allows production companies to claim back up to 25% of the costs they incur in the UK.

One of the conditions of receiving the tax credit is that the companies it is paid to must be responsible for everything from pre-production to delivery of the movie and beyond as they pay for goods and services in relation to the finished film. Their financial statements reveal everything from the total costs of the movie to the number of production staff on the picture. The production companies have code names so that they don’t raise attention when filing for permits to film off-site and the one behind the 2018 Tomb Raider movie is called Raider Productions in a nod to the source material.

MGM founded the company in 2016, five years before it announced that it had been acquired by Amazon for $8.5 billion. The financial statements for Raider Productions reveal that a total of $108.1 million (£87.4 million) was spent on making Tomb Raider with one of the biggest costs being the $2.2 million (£1.8 million) spent on production staff which peaked at 56 people.

The total spending was in line with the highest budget estimates reported for the movie but it doesn’t stop there. MGM also received a $10.3 million (£8.3 million) cash refund from the UK government bringing Tomb Raider’s net production costs to $97.8 million. This was closer to the lower end of the budget estimates and the financial statements reveal that “the estimated total cost was within budget.” This prudence paid off.

According to industry analyst Box Office Mojo, the movie, which was distributed by Warner Bros., grossed a total of $274.7 million worldwide with the theaters getting around half of that and the remainder going to the studio. As shown on the graph below, this gave MGM approximately $137.4 million leaving it with a $39.6 million profit after deducting the net production costs.

This proved the potential of the franchise to MGM so the studio seriously explored a sequel. Lovecraft Country showrunner Misha Green was set to write and direct it and $277,000 (£224,000) was spent on it by Raider 2 Productions in the UK. The company was founded in January 2020 but was then hit by the curveball of Covid which temporarily shuttered studios all over the world.

It is understood that MGM had until May 2022 to greenlight a Tomb Raider sequel but let this lapse. It led to Vikander departing the project and the rights being put on the market through movie producer Graham King’s GK Films.

A host of Hollywood studios are believed to have put in bids but one dwarfed them all. Ironically it came from MGM’s new owner Amazon which started to look more seriously at the adventure genre when Disney put a fifth Indiana Jones move into production. The whip-cracking action star was the inspiration for Tomb Raider and the latest instalment in his long-running silver screen saga is set to debut in June.

Waller-Bridge will play Indy’s god daughter Helena making her a logical choice to breathe new life into Tomb Raider. She was in pole position. Waller-Bridge rose to prominence thanks to Fleabag, an Emmy award-winning sitcom based on her one-woman show of the same name. Its success convinced Amazon to sign her up to an overall deal in 2019 worth an estimated $20 million per year. The studio has grand ambitions for Tomb Raider including plans for an interconnected universe along the lines of the one that Marvel Studios is famous for. Waller-Bridge will script and executive produce the new film and TV series but that is just the start.

In December Amazon announced that it had signed an agreement to develop and publish a new multiplatform Tomb Raider title and this too will reportedly tie in to Waller-Bridge’s new productions. The Tomb Raider games have already featured their fair share of famous actresses as Lara Croft has been voiced by Camilla Luddington, Keeley Hawes and Minnie Driver. Hayley Atwell also brought the character to life in a Netflix
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anime series and the stage is now set for even more A Listers to join the cast.