Tom Cruise is slated to lace up his boots, strap on a weapon and kill aliens on March 14, 2014.
Well, at least that’s the day that Warner Bros. has pegged for the release of “All You Need Is Kill,” an sci-fi actioner directed by Doug Liman based on the Japanese novel of the same name that will star Cruise in the leading role. Along for the rollercoaster ride will be Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton, Jonas Armstrong (BBC TV’s “Robin Hood”), Tony Way (“Game of Thrones”), Kick Gurry (Australian TV’s “Tangle”), Franz Drameh (“Attack the Block”), Dragomir Mrsic and Charlotte Riley (“World Without End”). The film began production yesterday (Oct. 1).
The story unfolds in a near future in which a hive-like alien race, called Mimics, have hit the Earth in an unrelenting assault, shredding great cities to rubble and leaving millions of human casualties in their wake. With the world’s armies joining forces for a last stand offensive against the alien horde, it seems that no one can match the speed, brutality or seeming prescience of the weaponized Mimic fighters or their telepathic commanders.
Cruise will play Lt. Col. Bill Cage, an officer who has never seen a day of combat when he is dropped—untrained and ill-equipped—into what amounts to little more than a suicide mission. Cage is killed within minutes, managing to take an Alpha down with him. But, he awakens back at the beginning of the same hellish day, and is forced to fight and die again…and again. Direct physical contact with the alien throws Cruise’s character into a time loop—dooming him to live out the same brutal combat over and over.
Before audiences get a chance to see this sci-fi “Groundhog’s Day” on the screen, Cruise will next been seen in “Jack Reacher” (Dec. 21) opposite Rosamund Pike and Robert Duvall. Next spring he has “Oblivion” (April 12), the latest sci-fi effort from “Tron: Legacy” director Joseph Kosinski that also stars Olga Kurylenko, Andrea Riseborough, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Morgan Freeman and Melissa Leo.
Props: HitFlix