Back in 2014, Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt teamed up with director Doug Liman for the time loop action flick Edge of Tomorrow (or Live Die Repeat, if you prefer), and while the final product didn’t make that much of a splash at the box office, it earned a lot of positive critical reception. That was enough to warrant a sequel being officially announced by spring 2016, but five years later, there’s still no sign of Edge of Tomorrow 2. At this point, Blunt is skeptical the sequel will still happen for one reason: money.
While promoting her latest movie, A Quiet Place: Part II, on Howard Stern, Emily Blunt discussed her time on Edge of Tomorrow with the eponymous host. When Stern inquired about if Tom Cruise had ever asked her to do a sequel, the actress answered:
We wanted to. Honestly, I think the movie’s too expensive. Yeah, I don’t know how we’re going to do it. I think that it’s hard to align everyone’s schedules. I would love it. Doug Liman would love it. Tom would love it. We’d all love to do it, but I think until we figure out what’s going on with the industry – honestly, I think we need to figure out what is the next road map for the kinds of films that people want to make.
It’s understandable why Emily Blunt would be concerned about the cost of making Edge of Tomorrow 2. The first movie worked off a $178 million budget and ended its box office run collecting $370.5 million worldwide. It’s one thing for a studio for shell out between $150-200 million on an entry in a massive franchise, like Star Wars or the MonsterVerse, but for something like Edge of Tomorrow 2, Warner Bros might not be as keen nowadays pouring nearly as much money into it as it did with Edge of Tomorrow nearly a decade ago, especially considering that movie’s lukewarm theatrical performance.
But as Emily Blunt also noted, scheduling has also been a major obstacle with getting Edge of Tomorrow 2 off the ground. Back in January, Doug Liman stated that with the script ready to go, it’s just a matter of him, Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt all finding the time to finally tackle the sequel. But that’s easier said than done; Cruise is currently working on Mission: Impossible 7 and Mission: Impossible 8, Blunt recently signed on to the BBC and Amazon Studios series The English, and Liman is gearing up to re-team with Cruise on their outer space movie. So yeah, Edge of Tomorrow 2 is clearly lower down on their lists of priorities.
All this isn’t to say that Edge of Tomorrow 2 definitely won’t happen, but as things stand now, its chances of moving into production seem slimmer than ever. Doug Liman once described the project as “a sequel that’s a prequel,” and The Invention of Lying’s Matthew Robinson wrote the most recent version of the script. But even now, we have no idea what Tom Cruise’s William Cage and Emily Blunt’s Rita Vrataski would deal with in their next adventure, other than that it would involve them going backwards in time. With the way things are going, if Edge of Tomorrow 2 doesn’t end up getting made, hopefully we’ll at least learn what in store for these characters.
But rest assured, if it’s announced that Edge of Tomorrow 2 is finally moving forward, we here at CinemaBlend will let you know. In the meantime, you can next see Emily Blunt in A Quiet Place: Part II when it premieres on May 28, followed by Jungle Cruise on July 30. Tom Cruise will return to the big screen for Top Gun: Maverick on November 19, and Mission: Impossible 7 will arrive on May 27, 2022.
