Christopher McQuarrie Says Edge of Tomorrow 2 Is a Possibility

"It all comes down to Warner Bros. and Doug Liman and Emily Blunt saying yes," McQuarrie told Uproxx . "The idea is there. At worst, it's the kernel of an idea – which is, on one hand, great, but on the other hand, I know what a nightmare that is. I know that I'll be in the void trying to figure that out. And even then when it came out in the press after Tom had mentioned it, right away, there were people on social media saying, 'Don't do it, it should never have a sequel, etc., etc.' And I'm just laughing because I'm like, 'You guys don't even know what we are talking about! You have no idea!'"

"Well, here's the thing: I love working with Tom. We've really clicked. And I've entered into a zone where I'm going from movie to movie – where, for years, I couldn't get anything – and now just going from movie to movie without any real creative interference. There's no noise, no bother. That is something that you can never take for granted, and you'd be a fool to walk away from.



At the same time, 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?'"



"I would write into the movie to make that movie an easier sell. Edge of Tomorrow was incredibly difficult to market. From the look of the film… To the title of the film, whatever the title was, whether it was All You Need is Kill or Edge of Tomorrow - and God help us figuring out what the title of the sequel is. The Edge of the Day After Tomorrow? I don't know. But the humor in the film took a good 35 minutes to really dawn on you – the movie really sneaks up on you and takes this sudden left turn. The movie didn't have the moments that a trailer needs to tell you, 'This is the experience you're going to have.'"



(I love that he just pretended Live. Die. Repeat. never happened.)



And if you thought that was cynical, just wait until you hear what he has to say about the hype surrounding a movie:



"If people are talking about your movie on social media the weekend that it opens and telling each other to see the movie, you're already fucked. It's not a driver of getting people to go see a quality movie. You need to be building your social-media campaign a year before the movie comes out... Edge of Tomorrow didn't have a presence on social media until the weekend it came out, then people go, 'Oh my God, it's really good' … it was too little, too late."



(I love that he just pretended Live. Die. Repeat. never happened.)And if you thought that was cynical, just wait until you hear what he has to say about the hype surrounding a movie:

So basically, a movie has to be considered "good" and/or "exciting" before anyone's actually seen it. But if it's good enough that it is beloved in spite of a lack of an easy hook, it's already lost the game. That's depressing. But on the plus side, an Edge of Tomorrow sequel would be just that: a sequel. It would have a built-in fanbase and would almost be guaranteed excitement well ahead of time, even if McQuarrie didn't write the film differently.

Tom Cruise recently revealed that he pitched an idea for an Edge of Tomorrow sequel to screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie and director Doug Liman, but it was unclear whether anyone aside from Cruise was entertaining the possibility. Now, McQuarrie has responded to the rumors, and while he didn't confirm that it's on the horizon, he did confirm that it's possible:We're surprised, but relieved, to hear that Emily Blunt is considered to be just as necessary to a sequel as Cruise, McQuarrie, and Liman. She was one of the best parts of the film, and as much as we would love to see a sequel, we're not sure we would want to see a sequel that didn't include her.But most importantly, McQuarrie is affirming that the sequel could actually happen. To be fair, McQuarrie sounds a little ambivalent about his own involvement in the project, but he seems to love Cruise's idea enough that he would get on board if all the relevant parties said yes:It seems like a no-brainer to make a sequel, as fans and critics alike loved Edge of Tomorrow, and that positive word-of-mouth will go a long way towards making the sequel a financial success. If the first film was a financial failure, it wasn't the result of any creative issues, but marketing ones. Most famously, no one could decide what to name the film; it was adapted from the manga All You Need Is Kill (which, honestly, they should have just kept, because that's an awesome name), only to market the film as Edge of Tomorrow (fine, but generic), and then randomly pretend that the name of the movie was Live. Die. Repeat. (even more generic) in Blu-ray sales. It's kind of hard to market a film if you can't remember what it's called.But that being said, McQuarrie said that he would write a sequel to be more marketable in general: