Hey, remember Edge of Tomorrow?
Maybe you remember when they renamed it Live. Die. Repeat. when it was released on DVD and Blu-Ray.
Perhaps, to you, it was always known as All You Need Is Kill, from the Japanese ‘light novel’ of the same name.
Marketing concerns aside – we’ll come back to those – the one thing we should all agree on is that Edge of Tomorrow was great.
It placed Tom Cruise as a cocky pen-pushing military type into a war zone situation in which he was wildly out of his depth against alien attackers, and proceeded to kill him off immediately.
And then he came back to life, and they killed him again.
And then again. And again. And again.
The genius here – almost entirely absent from the pre-release trailers – was that the movie was really, really funny.
A dark streak of humour ran through it, as Cruise paid tribute to Jerry Maguire by playing a flawed man who needs to cop on and do better before the credits roll.
Throw in some great visuals and inspired casting with the likes of Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton and Brendan Gleeson providing able support, and you had a fun time at the cinema that left even the biggest Cruise sceptics smiling.
Though it didn’t set the box office on fire – an ultimate $370 million worldwide return was deemed something of a failure – the 2014 Doug Liman-directed vehicle is coming back for more.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, a sequel is in development, with Cruise, Blunt and Liman all expected to return.
That all depends on Monster Trucks and The Invention of Lying screenwriter Matthew Robinson, who apparently has to turn in a good enough script in order to land the stars and director.
No pressure then, mate.
Still, all three have expressed their desire to make another one, and it’s not exactly rocket science, so get it done, Robinson…
