Doug Liman, director of sci-fi action movie Edge of Tomorrow, is open to directing a sequel to the film if one ever materializes. Released in 2014, the movie sees an army PR officer inexperienced in combat be sent to the front lines in the battle against a hostile alien invasion and promptly killed, only to be resurrected the previous day after coming in contact with an alien’s blood. With each subsequent iteration of the time loop he becomes more adept at combat and better able to memorize the patterns of the battles he keeps reliving, eventually becoming key to defeating the extraterrestrial incursion.

The movie is adapted from All You Need Is Kill, a light novel (a Japanese equivalent of young adult books) by Hiroshi Sakurazaka. A sequel to the film has been in various levels of development for several years, with Liman having been signed on to direct since April 2016. The latest development was earlier this year, when writer Matthew Robinson (Dora and the Lost City of Gold; The Invention of Lying) was brought on to pen the screenplay. An earlier script by writer duo Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse (Race; The Aftermath) dealt with the first film’s less than clear ending, although whether this new version will incorporate those ideas is not yet apparent.

Liman was interviewed by ScreenGeek while he was at NYCC promoting season 2 of Impulse, a YouTube Premium series set in the same world as Jumper where a teenage girl develops powers of teleportation and psychokinesis. When asked about the possibility of a sequel, he couldn’t say that it was definitely going to go ahead, but certainly sounded enthusiastic about the prospect. He stated:

Although the film was a moderate success at the box office, it was not considered to have been as successful as was expected, especially in light of how much of a hit it was with critics. To distance the film from its cinema run, for the home release it was rebranded to instead emphasize its tagline of Live Die Repeat. On home media the tagline is featured prominently over the cover design, with the actual title run along the bottom in a font about an eighth of the size, while on VOD platforms the title is listed as “Live Die Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow.” The change is now even extending to the sequel, whose current working title is Live Die Repeat and Repeat.

“We’re working on that. We’re still not sure if we’re gonna do it or not. But it’s a world that I love and that Tom [Cruise] loves and Emily [Blunt] loves and we have a great story that we’re working on. So, it’s definitely something to be excited to go back to.”

The plot of Edge of Tomorrow was contained to the events of a single and pretty good story, and was certainly one of the better movies in which Tom Cruise has starred in recent years. The possibility of revisiting the setting is an intriguing one, and although given the nature of the story it will likely involve some repetition, but only enough to get things going, and with a little of the comedic content that made the first film stand out.

Next: Everything We Know About Edge of Tomorrow 2

Source: ScreenGeek