Despite being critically acclaimed, the 2014 sci-fi Edge of Tomorrow was only a modest success at the box office, so it was a little surprising when it was officially announced that Doug Liman and stars Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt would be returning for the sequel, titled Live Die Repeat and Repeat.
Ever-modest, director Doug Liman has already claimed that the second movie will “revolutionize how people make sequels”, and now the filmmaker has been chatting to Cinema Blend about what the follow-up has in store for Tom Cruise’s Bill Cage.
“You know, it’s a sequel that’s a prequel. That being said, he has a way better arc in the sequel. Because in Live Die Repeat, he’s basically saving the world because he lives there. He really is just trying to save the girl. He has not necessarily become less of a coward [by the end], and he hasn’t necessarily become a better person. As a matter of fact, that was something that was important to Tom. When we were making the movie, we would joke that he’s only saving the Earth because he lives here. He would choose to just leave and go be somewhere else if he could. So his character never really makes the transformation. Vince Vaughn’s character doesn’t really make the transformation in Swingers. I love anti-heroes, and sometimes I love them for their anti-heroness, so you don’t want to necessarily lose that. That being said, he has a proper arc in the sequel, which is why I’m so excited to make the movie.”
Liman also chatted to Den of Geek about the saga surrounding the first movie’s title, which started out as All You Need Is Kill, before being released as Edge of Tomorrow and then subsequently retconned into Live Die Repeat:
“So the book was called All You Need Is Kill. Japanese. I was making a comedy – an action comedy, and All You Need Is Kill didn’t feel like it was the tone of the movie I had made. The studio wanted to call it Edge Of Tomorrow, and I wanted to call it Live Die Repeat. I fought vehemently and lost. And then when the film came out and people loved it but the box-office wasn’t as good as it should have been, I really railed into the executive at Warner Bros who’d insisted that Edge Of Tomorrow was the better title. I was like, ‘It clearly is not. You were wrong.’ I committed the cardinal sin of telling somebody in Hollywood when they’re wrong, like, literally – I ended up having to call the person and apologize for pointing out that they were wrong. And they started titling it the title I always thought it should have, which is Live Die Repeat. But they tiptoed around it, and when we make the sequel, it [the first film] will be permanently titled Live Die Repeat. The sequel will be Live Die Repeat and Repeat.”
As yet, there’s no word on a production start date for Live Die Repeat and Repeat, or where it will fit into Liman and Cruise’s schedules alongside their other upcoming sci-fi Luna Park.
