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Credit: Warner Bros.Emily Blunt has had a storied career in the film industry with starring roles in Mary Poppins Returns, Jungle Cruise, A Quiet Place and recently Oppenheimer. Despite her appearance in all of these blockbusters, she has been waiting for a follow-up to one of her most underrated movies. Luckily, Blunt has confirmed that one of her favorite projects has finalized a script and she is just waiting on Tom Cruise for the go-ahead.
Edge of Tomorrow (2014) was a sci-fi epic based on the Japanese novel, “All You Need Is Kill” by Hiroshi Sakurazaka. The adaptation centered around a war-dodging military publicist, Bill Cage (Tom Cruise), who is thrown into humanity’s last-stand against a dominating alien species. During a losing battle with the enemy, Cage is unexpectedly killed, then thrown into a time loop. He has been condemned to repeat the same day (Groundhog Day-status), which always ends with his death.
Cage decided the only way to close the loop was to survive the war. So he enlisted the help of the war’s most decorated warrior, Rita Vrataski (Blunt), to train him in being the ultimate warrior. The movie became a refreshing mix of sci-fi with dark comedy, that poked fun at the time-loop premise. It also cheekily created action-packed sequences to kill Tom Cruise’s character off in humorous ways, either by aliens, the fog of war or sheer clumsiness.
The movie was critically-acclaimed with countless positive reviews, but it was still considered a financial disappointment. It grossed $370 million at the box office, but Warner Bros. deemed that as a failure, so the sequel was shelved indefinitely. Edge of Tomorrow would go onto build a passionate fanbase who have petitioned for Tom Cruise to produce and reprise the role in the sequel.
Well, Blunt divulged recently that original director, Doug Liman, slipped her the script to the sequel and she would love to make it a reality once it is greenlit. She lamented that she is not certain when the movie will go into development since Cruise has been committed to the Mission Impossible franchise.
Warner Bros. initially wanted to adapt Edge of Tomorrow into a tv series for MAX, but the momentum stopped when screenwriter, Christopher McQuarrie, paused its development to do Mission Impossible with Cruise. Emily Blunt’s passion for the project certainly provides an optimism for the movie’s destiny, but it will not be hitting the silver screen anytime in the near future. That is unless Cruise can find another excuse to either run full speed or perform more death-defying stunts that would make viewers wince.
Have you seen Edge of Tomorrow? Do you think it warrants a sequel?