While it has been a few months since the reboot of Perfect Dark being developed by The Initiative was canceled, the title’s development was reportedly going quite well at the time. In an interview with The Gamer, voice actor Alix Wilton-Regan, who was playing protagonist Joanna Dark in Perfect Dark, has revealed how surprised she was when the project got canceled. Wilton-Regan, who is now playing the role of Lara Croft in the upcoming Tomb Raider: Catalyst and Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, said that she found out about the cancellation at the same time as everybody else.
“I was as shocked, surprised, and devastated as everyone else was when the funding was pulled, and the studio was closed,” she said. “I did not see it coming. I was absolutely blindsided when the project was defunded.”
According to Wilton-Regan, voice recording work on Perfect Dark had taken place throughout 2023, with a lot of performance capture taking place in 2024, as well as 2025. She noted that the work was pretty far along, with recording work entire chapters having been completed before its eventual completion. The Initiative “had delivered several milestones that the client was really happy with,” she noted.
“We were basically recording bits and bobs throughout ’23,” said Wilton-Regan. “We were also doing lots of performance capture for it in ’24, and we were even recording more stuff for it in ’25. To my knowledge, we were pretty far along. I’d done entire chapters of this universe.” She doesn’t quite know how much of the development work had been completed, however.
“It was devastating. So many people lost their jobs. An entire workforce was disbanded,” she said about the project getting cancelled and the studio getting shut down. “There was an ecosystem of creativity and collaboration that was in place that we lost overnight. It was really difficult, really difficult for everybody.”
Interestingly, Wilton-Regan also acknowledged the efforts to revive development on the Perfect Dark reboot, which was slated to take place through Embracer Group acquiring the IP rights from Microsoft and selling it to Take-Two Interactive, who would then bankroll the development. This deal, however, would ultimately fall through, with Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics facing lay-offs as a result.
“That was the day I was really sad because that was the day I lost hope,” Wilton-Regan said about the attempt to reboot development. “Initially, when it made it to the press that Perfect Dark was being defunded, a lot of people reached out for comments about it, both in the media, as well as personally, friends, and professionally, colleagues.
“I couldn’t say too much about it because I knew The Initiative was in talks to keep Perfect Dark up and running in some shape or form. Possibly a slimmed-down version, possibly something slightly different. But certainly, everyone was working really hard behind the scenes to bring Perfect Dark back. And then one day, I heard from the creative director that the deal hadn’t gone through, and that really everything had fallen apart, and production was fully stopping.”
Looking to the future, Wilton-Regan also spoke about the uncertainty of the times. Since she’s playing Lara Croft in the upcoming Tomb Raider games, she spoke about how working on both Lara and Joanna felt like “genuinely one of the most creatively exciting times” of her life. She went on to note that, while her work as Joanna might not see the light of day, “I just felt so relieved that I still had Lara, but I also felt really frightened about losing Lara. I’m still frightened of losing Lara.”
You can experience Wilton-Regan’s work as Lara Croft in 2026 with the release of Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, as well as in 2027 with Tomb Raider: Catalyst. Both titles will be coming to PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. As for the Perfect Dark reboot, while the title may not be in development anymore, former studio head Darrel Gallagher and Perfect Dark director Brian Horton have been hired by Take-Two Interactive to form a brand new studio under the 2K umbrella.
