When Tom Cruise recently appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (back when the show still had Jon Stewart), he told a good story about having a pitch for Edge of Tomorrow 2. He admitted that he would need Emily Blunt to come on board, but according to a new interview, Cruise has convinced at least one other important collaborator that a sequel to Edge is a great idea.
Christopher McQuarrie, who co-wrote the Edge of Tomorrow screenplay that Doug Liman directed, was speaking with Uproxx about his own Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation when the topic of Edge of Tomorrow 2 came up. Instead of expressing excitement, McQuarrie sounded wary, primarily because the first movie was a grind, but Cruise’s idea for the sequel seemed impossible to dismiss. He told the site:
Edge of Tomorrow was so hard and was so draining. When we went out to dinner when we were making Mission and Tom said, "I have an idea for the sequel to Edge, and I said, ‘I don’t want to fucking hear it. I do not want to know!’ And he pitched the idea to me and he finished pitching it, I was like, ‘Goddammit, why did you do that?’"
Will it happen? It’s really far too early to tell. Christopher McQuarrie admitted in the same interview that this is just the "the kernel of an idea," and that multiple parties need to get on board with it before it ever becomes a movie that might make it to movie theaters. But they are talking about it.
What might hold Edge of Tomorrow 2 up? Ironically, it could be the next Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie joint that pushes an Edge sequel onto the backburner. There’s no denying that Doug Liman’s Edge of Tomorrow made enough money to justify a sequel. After a slow start, the sci-fi thriller ended up pulling in $369 million internationally. But Cruise’s Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation is doing better at the box, and likely will sail past that figure in time. That’s why there has been talk of a sixth Mission, which the 53-year-old action star likely will want to start filming soon. I mean, how many prime action years does the inexhaustible Tom Cruise really have left?
As much as we all want a sequel to Edge of Tomorrow, I’m willing to guess that between Mission: Impossible and Jack Reacher sequels, it’s going to be a long time before a feasible version of the sequel could get off the ground. And what if Cruise gets the itch to star in a non-franchise role (as he frequently does)? This idea might sound great on paper, but the execution… that’s another hurdle, entirely.
