Tom Cruise has certainly been sci-fi happy as of late, signing on to “TRON: Legay” director Joseph Kosinski’s futuristic romance “Oblivion”/”Horizons” (the project, which rising star Jessica Chastain recently boarded, has been called by both titles at different stages of its development) back in May and now “All You Need Is Kill”, an alien-invasion film about a military recruit who is forced to relive the day he was slaughtered in battle against an army of extaterrestrial intruders over and over again (essentially a sci-fi twist on “Groundhog Day”).
The screenplay by Dante Harper (“Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters”) was bought by Warner Bros. back in April 2010, according to Deadline, which broke the story. Doug Liman (“Mr. and Mrs. Smith”) is slated to direct the film, from a script rewritten by Joby Harold.
The project is based on the Japanese novel of the same name by Hiroshi Sakurazaka.
Cruise has a solid, if brief, list of sci-fi films under his belt – namely the Steven Spielberg films “Minority Report” and “War of the Worlds”, though 2001’s “Vanilla Sky” also possessed elements of the genre. As for Liman, his career over the last few years has been generally hit-or-miss, and his sole science-fiction movie – 2008’s “Jumper” – was met with a generally negative reception (though it did manage to gross over $220 million worldwide on a reported $85 million budget).
Cruise will next be seen in this month’s highly-anticipated “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol”; he also has a starring role in “Rock of Ages”, an adaptation of the Broadway musical which hits theaters on June 1, 2012.
Does “All You Need Is Kill” sound like a movie you’d go and see, at least on a conceptual basis? Do you think Liman is the right director for it? We’d also be interested to hear if anyone has read the book, and what they thought of it…