Tom Holland Would Love to Team Up With Lara Croft In an ‘Uncharted’ Crossover Film
Uncharted is one of the biggest movies of the pandemic era. Now that the film is all but certain to be one of Sony’s big tentpole franchises, there is plenty of talk on where to take the swashbuckling adventurer Nathan Drake next. After all, the movie’s take on the character is very different from the one seen in Sony’s Uncharted video game series.
Lead actor Tom Holland, of all people, came up with the most ambitious idea of them all. He thinks it would be fun to pair Drake off with the other treasure-hunting adventurer with video game roots, Lara Croft. But is a Tomb Raider crossover really in the cards for the Uncharted franchise?
Tom Holland thinks Uncharted would pair perfectly with Tomb Raider
Holland is clearly on to something with the idea of pairing Uncharted with Tomb Raider. Both franchises come from long-running action games. Both are indebted to old globetrotting adventure stories. Both, without shame, pull heavily from the Indiana Jones movies.
“I think it would be fun,” Holland said in an interview with Fandango All Access. But what was even more interesting than the premise is his confidence in how realistic it actually is.
“Sony [Pictures chairman] Tom Rothman, being the incredible studio head that he is, has all the skills in his pocket to make a Lara Croft crossover happen,” Holland continued. He cites the unprecedented deal Sony hammered out with Disney to share the Spider-Man character in films as proof positive of this assertion.
Has Uncharted ever crossed over with Tomb Raider before?
Tomb Raider and Uncharted are both cut from the same cloth. The franchises are a natural fit together. But, as Destructoid reports, their only official appearance in the same product is in the form of Fortnite skins based on the respective franchises. But, if Holland’s talk is more than just a flight of fancy, what could a crossover look like?
For those who haven’t seen the Uncharted film adaptation, the pairing of Drake and Croft would have a different dynamic than one might assume. Holland’s Drake is a younger, far less experienced version than the world-weary one seen in the video game series. The current take on Croft, in both the rebooted video games and the 2018 film, puts the character in a similar place.
The real issue might instead be the gap in pop culture cache between the two franchises. The 2018 Alicia Vikander vehicle Tomb Raider was only a modest success, with a sequel stuck in development hell. The current video game series, too, is in limbo since the 2018 trilogy-closing Shadow of the Tomb Raider.
Despite mixed reviews, the Uncharted film was a huge success like the original Tomb Raider
There was a lot of trepidation leading up to the release of the Uncharted film. The separation from the games, the change in tone stemming from portraying a younger Drake, and trailers broadly talked about as underwhelming dogged the movie’s opening. But audiences turned out, largely enjoying the movie despite the mixed critical response, according to Yahoo! Entertainment.
While many fans thought this film would land more along the lines of the Tomb Raider 2018 reboot, it instead is set to spawn a franchise like the original Lara Croft: Tomb Raider did. It proves Holland as a box office draw outside of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. All around, the news is extremely positive for the future of this franchise.
But can Tomb Raider enjoy a similar bump? Are we in another golden age of globetrotting action-adventure films? Or is Holland the real draw here? That remains to be seen — but Holland himself wants to see it happen.
