Although some movies are developed with sequels, prequels and perhaps a shared-universe in mind, I didn't think that Doug Liman's EDGE OF TOMORROW was one of those movies. It wrapped things up fairly nicely and brought its incredible time-travel story full circle, but audiences wanted more of Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt's time-travel shenanigans, so here we are. Recently dubbed LIVE DIE REPEAT AND REPEAT, the EDGE OF TOMORROW sequel will in fact be both a sequel and a prequel, and Doug Liman told MTV's Happy Sad Confused podcast (via Collider) that "when you see it, you’ll be like, 'I get exactly what he meant by that.'" The director went on to tease a new scene-stealing character as well as reveal that the sequel may actually be smaller than the first.
I think what people tend to do with sequels is they just make them bigger. And I’m like, ‘No, a sequel should be smaller.’ You did the first film as sort of the ad campaign for the sequel, so now you don’t need as much action, and in the case of Edge of Tomorrow, people obviously loved the comedy and they loved the situation … so we can do way more focued on Tom’s character and Emily Blunt’s character, and there’s a third character in the sequel that’s gonna for sure steal the movie. We can focus on that. I don’t need an action sequence every two minutes. People usually think the other way about sequels, a lot of times there's not any story left for the sequel.
As for whether EDGE OF TOMORROW will continue on past LIVE DIE REPEAT AND REPEAT, Liman says that he views this as a two-movie franchise. "There’s the completion of the story we set up in the first movie and the relationships between Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt—because, remember, at the end of the first movie, she doesn’t know who he is, and that’s gonna launch us into an amazing new direction," Liman said. LIVE DIE REPEAT AND REPEAT will also pick up right where EDGE OF TOMORROW left off, but "it doesn’t keep going forward, because we’d screw with time, because the aliens screwed with time."
One of the more entertaining elements of the first movie was witnessing Tom Cruise's character die over and over again, which is something which will continue with LIVE DIE REPEAT AND REPEAT, albeit a little differently.
It’s mostly not on the battlefield, so there’s a whole new arena of fights we’re going to do using a lot of the technology, but also, because it is a prequel, it’s a lot of the precursor stuff. I’m really interested in the details of that … Like batteries, do they run out on these suits? I mean, they must have batteries. Or he gets stuck with the menu in the wrong language, just the reality of that menu stuck in the wrong language when you’re in the middle of a battlefield and aliens are all around you and you gotta get the suit working again, that detail gives you drama and excitement. And humor. In the sequel, I’m creating an environment where I get to have even more of those details.
There's currently no release date for the EDGE OF TOMORROW sequel, but Doug Liman's next project, AMERICAN MADE, is set to hit theaters on September 22, 2017. Tom Cruise stars as Barry Seal, a former drug smuggler recruited by the CIA to run one of the biggest covert operations in U.S. history, one which almost brought down the Reagan White House through the Iran Contra scandal.