Following years of languishing in development hell, Doug Liman offers an encouraging update on Edge of Tomorrow 2. Liman previously teamed with Tom Cruise for the 2014 adaptation of the Japanese novel All You Need Is Kill, in which Cruise starred as a military public affairs officer who becomes stuck in a time loop in a future in which aliens have invaded Earth and are slowly winning the war against humanity, but uses the looping to find a way to beat them. Though garnering rave reviews from critics, Edge of Tomorrow was only viewed a modest box office hit, which has partly complicated sequel plans.
Now, during an interview with Total Film for his upcoming action-comedy The Instigators, Liman was asked about the long journey to making Edge of Tomorrow 2. Though not indicating where in the development process the sci-fi sequel might be, he did assure that Warner Bros. is “constantly” asking about when it will happen, making for an exciting update on the follow-up. Check out what Liman shared below:
I do think there’s probably no better compliment to a movie than people wanting for there to be a sequel. Road House - there’s call for a sequel. Edge of Tomorrow, there’s no better compliment than Warner Bros. constantly bringing up, “Will you go and make another one of these?”
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Development on Edge of Tomorrow 2 has been a rocky road for the past decade, with various starts and stops throughout the years. Cruise, Liman and co-writer and frequent Cruise collaborator Christopher McQuarrie have reiterated that they have the story idea ready for the sequel, which is said to be a “sequel that’s a prequel”. However, the writing team has changed a number of times, beginning with Snake Eyes duo Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse, before Love and Monsters co-writer Matthew Robinson was brought on in 2019 to rewrite the screenplay, which was finished in October of that year.
The biggest hurdle for Edge of Tomorrow 2 to get off the ground thus far has proven to be both the financial logistics and busy schedules of Cruise and co-star Emily Blunt in making the sequel.
How did they ignore time travel? Cruise only time travels when he dies and he stopped doing that about halfway through.
They explained that. He lost too much of the alien’s blood when he bled out after that accident, and was given a blood transfusion. He had to die without bleeding out or he lost the power. That’s why he killed himself sometimes if he was going to die a slow death. He no longer has time travel after waking up in the hospital. He regains it again at the end because another one of those Alphas bleeds all over him when he bombs the primary or whatever it’s called.
It was just the transfusion that broke the chain. Had nothing to do with him bleeding out. I suspect he died by bleeding or at least a few times. He died on the battlefield hundreds of not thousands of times.