Lara Croft: Tomb Raider was the highest-grossing film on its opening weekend. A sequel, titled "", was released in 2003. In pursuit of a diamond, Lara Croft (Angelina Jolie) battles a large robot in an Egyptian tomb; she disables it by ripping out its circuits. The diamond, revealed to be a memory card, is inserted into a laptop computer inside the robot to play music. The fight took place in a practice area of Lara's home and the robot was programmed by her technical assistant Bryce (Noah Taylor) to challenge her in combat. The first phase of a planetary alignment, culminating in a solar
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider several writers, which resulted in production delays. In 1998, writer Brent V. Friedman, who had co-written "" the year before, penned an unproduced "Tomb Raider" script. Producer and screenwriter Steven E. de Souza, who wrote and directed the 1994 video game film "Street Fighter", penned an early draft of the "Tomb Raider" script in 1999, but it was rejected by Paramount. The final draft of the script was attributed to five writers, including director Simon West. "Lara Croft" was financed through Tele München Gruppe (TMG), a German tax shelter. The tax law of Germany allowed investors to take an instant