Edge Of Tomorrow Fans Shouldn't Give Up Sequel Hopes Yet

For fans of the 2014 sci-fi action film "Edge of Tomorrow," the wait for a sequel has been long and full of disappointment. For a while there in 2022 it seemed like Warner Bros. might make a TV show that would serve as a sequel/spinoff, but two years later there still haven't been any updates. And though there've been plenty of rumors of a sequel movie in development, we've still gone ten years now without any official announcement. 

Admittedly, it makes sense that "Edge of Tomorrow" would take a while to get a sequel greenlit. It wasn't a huge hit when it first came out; thanks to its $175 million budget, its $370 million worldwide box office earnings were considered a disappointment. It also doesn't help that the two main leads, Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt, have been so busy over the past decade. Even if the studio knew exactly which direction they wanted to take the sequel, it would've been difficult to schedule both stars in between countless "Mission Impossible" and "A Quiet Place" films.  

Still, in a recent interview with Total Film, director Doug Liman teased that a potential sequel is still possible. In fact, there's more behind-the-scenes interest in the idea that you might expect.

"I do think there's probably no better compliment to a movie than people wanting for there to be a sequel," Doug Liman said. "There's no better compliment than Warner Bros. constantly bringing up, 'Will you go and make another one of these?'" 

Even though "Edge of Tomorrow" wasn't an immediate box office hit, it's definitely built up a passionate audience through word of mouth over the years, to the point where it makes sense the execs at Warner Bros. might give it a second look. Brad Bird, director of films like "The Incredibles" and "Ratatouille," once blamed the movie's financial failure on audiences' general disinterest in original films; he may be right, but the sequel wouldn't be facing the same problem. 

It helps that the creatives involved seem to have already put some thought into the sequel, with at least one draft of a script written by 2021 and "in really great shape," at least according to Emily Blunt at the time. Even back in 2016 Doug Liman was talking about his plans for a sequel, promising that it would "revolutionize how people make sequels." He didn't say much more on the topic, but in a later Collider interview he explained how he wanted to make the sequel even more character-focused: 

"I've always been interested in the idea of a sequel being more character-driven than the first film, because that's not how things are normally done. That's been my approach when developing the sequel and because Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt are such phenomenal actors. I get sometimes the sequel just has to have more firepower or more explosions, but no visual effect is going to top what you're going to get from a great scene performed by Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt." 

When asked about what it would take to get the sequel greenlit, Liman also told Collider, "If you can get Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt to commit to the movie, it's going to happen." It's a promising sentence, because it sure seems like Blunt would be interested. As she said in a 2021 Howard Stern interview regarding a potential sequel, "I would love it, Doug Liman would love it, Tom would love it, we all want to do it."

The only problem for Blunt at the time was that she feared the movie would be too expensive. "I don't know how we're going to do it, I think that it's hard to align everyone's schedules," she said. She also cited the particularly uncertain period of Hollywood in 2021, still firmly in the COVID-19 era: "Until we figure out what's going on with the industry ... I think we need to figure out what is the next roadblock for the kinds of films people want to make."

With Tom Cruise finishing up his "Mission Impossible" series, and with Hollywood largely moving past the covid chaos of 2021, the odds of a potential sequel feel higher than ever. Sure, there'll likely be all sorts of difficulties with budgeting and scheduling, not to mention the challenge of finding a natural next step to the original's (relatively self-contained) time loop/alien premise. But if there's a will there's a way, and it definitely seems like there's a will among Liman, Cruise, and Blunt to take this project on.