‘Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft’ Showrunner Tasha Huo Digs into the Origins of a Video Game Icon

This article was written for the November '24 issue of Animation Magazine (No. 344).

Netflix’s train of animated video game adaptations is moving full speed ahead. Coming off acclaimed interpretations of the Cyberpunk and Castlevania franchises and as they gear up for the second season of League of Legends adaptation, Arcane, Netflix claim more territory in the video game space through Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft. The 2D series will act as a direct continuation of the 2018 game Shadow of the Tomb Raider, requiring a showrunner with a deep knowledge and appreciation for the series.

“The producer, while in the process of getting the rights, saw that I was posting all of my updates of playing Shadow on Facebook,” showrunner Tasha Huo tells Animation Magazine. “He was like, ‘Oh, so you like Tomb Raider? Come on in, I want to tell you about this secret thing that we’re going to be doing.’ It was someone that I knew, and we really enjoyed working together before so of course I was incredibly stoked.”

Understanding the Adventuress

Video games and television are such vastly different mediums that when adapting an IP from the former to the latter, it’s important to find the essence of the game’s identity and infuse it into your adaptation. For Huo, that essence was Lara Croft’s distinctive personality. “I always wanted my version to be very character driven,” she states. “We know the action and the adventure of the video games, but if we’re doing a TV show, how do you make that different? I wanted to explore her psychology and who she is behind that superhero we play as. What’s cool about the canon that we’ve been given is that we have ‘Survivor Lara’ and her origin story, who is a very different woman than the woman she eventually becomes in the classic [‘90s] era. I was really excited to explore what must have gone on in her life to create that completely different person.”

Expressing character and action through animation was new to Huo, having not worked in the medium previously. “It was all very daunting,” says Huo. “Luckily, it’s something I love so much and am so passionate about, because I think the vision was always there and I just needed to learn these new tools. I asked the team a lot of questions at the beginning and just absorbed everything. Now I feel like an expert. I’m doing another animated show over at Amazon and it’s such a fun medium to get into. I’ve always wanted to do animation, but for a long time you had to be a comedy writer to even be noticed. Now we’re entering this new space with things like Arcane and Tomb Raider and Blue Eye Samurai and Mighty Nein, the other show that I’m working on, where it’s actually very adult, and they’re looking for dramatic writers to tell those elevated stories.”

Huo was also keen to take full advantage of the medium’s ability to play on a big scale. “It’s the animation that I wish I’d seen earlier,” explains Huo. “We get to have the violence and the action and the adventure, and we don’t shy away from big adult themes and set pieces. Animation has always created this huge sense of epicness and fantastical, whimsical brightness. There’s something cool about being able to set Lara through a larger-than-life world made from what we can do with paintings and backgrounds, the cool stuff that you get in animation, specifically.”

As with a good chunk of Netflix animated series, The Legend of Lara Croft was brought to life by Powerhouse Animation Studios. Previously helming such series as Castlevania, Masters of the Universe and Skull Island, Powerhouse have gained a reputation for handling beloved IP. Huo’s experience with the studio was seamless. “One of the main things that I love about them is that they are true fans of the game, so there was a shorthand,” Huo recalls. “There wasn’t a ton of conversation back and forth about her look and design, everyone just got it.” Just as important as Lara’s design was the design of the world, “The history and the locations and the globe-trotting is so important to the video game series that it had to be absolutely incredible in the animation. The paintings had to tell that story, and I think they knocked it out of the park.”

Locations were top of mind for the show’s supervising director, Powerhouse’s Julie Olson, who saw them as the unique challenge of The Legend of Lara Croft. “Like any adventure story, it involves travelling to complex environments that are both ‘never before seen’ but also adhere to cultural and historic reality,” Olson tells Animation Magazine. “Each location had an element of game-level complexity to it to match the sort of moving action and puzzle solving of an adventure genre show. Lara is hardly someone to sit still, and building the world to film her in was a unique task for our crew.”

Powerhouse Style

Powerhouse’s relationship with Netflix is a boon in an industry where consistent work is never guaranteed. Powerhouse’s pipeline for producing 2D, anime-style shows ensures a high-quality product, greatly enhancing the chances of working with a studio again. “We provide a strong marriage between our own internal production preparation and our outsourcing,” explains Olson. “Our crew goes above and beyond to send extra animation and designs to help our partner production companies where we can. Where we shine even more is in our extensive post production. Our artists will place a lot of additional work on the drawings, timing, and composting for each shot, to ensure a ‘Powerhouse Style’ that sets us apart from other studios. We have a very hands on approach throughout the entire pipeline, which allows for a more polished final result. Our goal is to be as efficient as possible, while achieving the highest quality show we can make.”

‘What’s cool about the canon is that we have “Survivor Lara” and her origin story, who is a very different woman than the woman she eventually becomes in the classic [‘90s] era.’

— Showrunner Tasha Huo

Olson echoed Huo’s importance placed on fidelity to the source material. “The games were our first inspiration,” she states. “Early in production we sat down with stills and screenshots and worked to make those our goal in creating moody, atmospheric sequences. Adventure in an ancient tomb is often coupled with the supernatural and horrific. One studio that always manages to blend those elements so well is Studio Ghibli. We were excited to create unique but slightly off-putting monsters into the show. The original games had so many small horror moments that we love inserting those visuals when we can.”

When an IP builds as big a following as Tomb Raider has over multiple decades, crafting an adaptation requires a form of fan service. The definition of fan service is nebulous, but for Huo, it came naturally to the show. “It requires that you come to the project with a passion for it and a fandom for it already,” she claims. “For me, I found that if I was pleasing myself and making the show that I wanted as a fan, then fans will also love it because I am one of them. As long as I’m seeing the things that I wish I had when playing the games, or what I wish this TV show would be, I feel like I’m serving the fans.”

Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft premieres on Netflix on October 10.