Trivia / Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life

• Banned in China: The film was banned in China because "it damaged China's reputation, giving the impression of a country in chaos, with no government, and overrun by secret societies."
• Box Office Bomb: Budget, $95 million. Box office, $65,660,196 (domestic), $156,505,388 (worldwide).
• California Doubling: Scotland doubled as China for the Great Wall sequence.
• Creator Killer: The negative reception to both this and the Angel of Darkness video game prompted an angry Eidos to relieve Core Design of their development duties regarding the Tomb Raider games, which led to their boss Jeremy Heath-Smith being shown the door and Core ultimately closed down a few years later. This movie also buried director Jan de Bont's career under 6 feet of dirt; he did not get involved with another film until 2012, and that movie was Dutch.
• Franchise Killer: The movie not only alienated the fanbase of both games and the first film, but also happened to be released around the same time as Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness, with the glory days of Core's run with Tomb Raider long gone and the entire franchise being at its lowest. This actually resulted in a lawsuit in which Core blamed the box office failure of The Cradle of Life for ruining the brand, while Paramount in return blamed Angel of Darkness for the same thing. A third film limbered in Development Hell for almost five years, until it was finally scrapped completely.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Craig Armstrong was originally announced as the film's composer before Alan Silvestri was hired.
  • A third film was planned for a 2005 or 2006 release since The Cradle of Life did better internationally, but it was scrapped when Jolie decided that two films was enough and thus the next film ultimately became the 2018 reboot.

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