Having previously proven – courtesy of its well-received vampire-whipping adaptation, Castlevania– that there are precious, valuable views To be extracted from anime treatments of popular movie and game licenses, Netflix announced today that it will give a similar treatment to that of 2017 Kong: Skull Island, as well as the long-term Tomb Raider franchise of games and movies.
Per The Hollywood Reporter, the Skull Island show is being developed by Legendary Television and extends the deep unsafe real estate common in the Samuel L. Jackson movie. It sounds like the series lights up Kong things-nobody likes to commit too much– but there will be a lot of people stranded on the titular island, and probably have a pretty hectic time there. Brian Duffield, who wrote previously The babysitter for Netflix, will write and executive produce.
The Tomb Raider show is meanwhile being developed by Tasha Huo, who wrote about the arrival of the streamer Witcher spin-off, Blood origin. Rather than working in elements of the current (S.until! Ben Wheatley is directing the new one, for some reason!) featuring Alicia Vikander’s live action series, the show will reportedly be a sequel to the most recent trilogy of Tomb Raider games, which started with simply rebooting with the title in 2013.
So far, Netflix’s anime adaptations have made it a virtue of being short and sweet: get in, tell a story, kill some vampires, get out. We’ll have to see if these ‘brand’ extensions (monkeys / vampires / action heroes who are equally sad about the killing, but the a lot of) can maintain that momentum.