2014’s Edge Of Tomorrow was both a success and a disappointment. On the one hand it was refreshing to see a big budget blockbuster starring Tom Cruise get released that wasn’t a sequel, remake or reboot – plus, the film was very good – yet on the other, it failed to draw in a major crowd.
This was often attributed to the generic title, which didn’t give audiences a clue that the film was about Cruise dying over and over again in a sort-of morbid version of Groundhog Day. The DVD and Blu-Ray releases practically rebranded the film, hiding the actual title and using the tagline Live.Die.Repeat instead.
With a sequel in the works, director Doug Liman revealed to Collider the title of the sequel:
“We have an amazing story! It’s incredible! Way better than the first film, and I obviously loved the first film. It will be called Live Die Repeat And Repeat. Tom is excited about it, and Emily Blunt is excited about it. The big question is just when we’ll do it. But it’s not an if, it’s a when”.
So it sounds like the crew preferred the home video title. The film was originally tiled All You Need Is Kill, the same title as its source material, but Warner Bros. didn’t want the word ‘kill’ in the title so they changed it. Of course, it was only when the film wasn’t making the money they hoped that they happily put the word ‘die’ in the title. Huh.
Liman expanded his thoughts about what he hoped the sequel could achieve:
“I’ve had some radical ideas about how to make a sequel that would interest me, in the same way that I had ideas of how you make an independent film and then Swingers came along and it was like ‘Aha, that’s the perfect movie for me to test these ideas out on.’ I had these intellectual ideas on how you should make a sequel that are unlike how anybody else makes a sequel, and this script and this idea fit perfectly into that idea.
So it’s gonna revolutionise how people make sequels. And again that’s why I try to do things like Invisible that are just, the revolution’s sort of built into the idea. It’s more heresy in the film world for me to pitch things that are sort of unheard of”.
Liman’s ideas certainly sound intriguing, now it just seems a matter of getting all the crew together for the sequel. With Cruise and writer Christopher McQuarrie tied up shooting Mission: Impossible 6, Blunt shooting Mary Poppins Returns and Liman himself attached to the adaptation of Justice League Dark, hopefully there’s a way to get the schedules all lined up and a sequel made.
#Peace.Love.EdgeOfTomorrow
