Although Alicia Vikander‘s Tomb Raider wasn’t a hit with me, it helped reinforce the notion that there was a desire to have more female-led action films. And now it looks like the sequel may have found its director.

According to new reports, Free Fire‘s Ben Wheatley has been tapped to direct the Tomb Raider sequel, and he will be using a script written by Amy Jump. More on the report below.

Deadline says MGM has set the release for the Tomb Raider sequel for March 19, 2021, with production on the sequel scheduled to begin early next year. No other details have been provided. The first film was directed by Roar Uthaug, and grossed $275 million worldwide.

In the first film, Lara Croft is a young treasure hunter who embarks on a perilous journey to her father’s last-known destination, hoping to solve the mystery of his disappearance. She also discovers that those closest to her are agents of a shadowy organization behind her father’s disappearance. No doubt, the sequel will address that.

Wheatley’s Free Fire was an action-packed flick with some humor sprinkled throughout the film. I suspect he will take a lot of that and inject it into the Tomb Raider sequel.

So it’s not as though the first film doesn’t deserve a sequel. There are other films that had far worse performances at the box office and were critically panned, and yet, still somehow got a sequel. Released in 2018, the Alicia Vikander starring vehicle Tomb Raider was a relative hit and earned mix reviews. As far as film adaptations of popular video games go, this one was one of the better ones of the bunch.

But this wouldn’t be the first time that a Tomb Raider film got a sequel. Back when Angelina Jolie starred as the titular character in 2001’s Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, the film was enough of a success to get a sequel titled Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life, which was released in 2003. Unfortunately, that film didn’t do as well as some would have hoped, and there was no follow-up. So, let’s just cross our fingers that this iteration does better.

No word yet on if Dominic West, Daniel Wu, and Kristin Scott Thomas will return to reprise their respective roles from the first film.

[Source: Deadline]