It's Just Movies

The upcoming epic sci-fi thriller, starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt and based on the book “All You Need is Kill,” will open on March 14, 2014, from Warner Bros. Pictures, Legendary Pictures and Village Roadshow Pictures.

Directed by Doug Liman, “All You Need is Kill” is the first motion picture to be shot at the recently-christened Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden. It began principal photography yesterday.

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. No army in the world can match the speed, brutality or seeming prescience of the weaponized Mimic fighters or their telepathic commanders. But now the world’s armies have joined forces for a last stand offensive against the alien horde, with no second chances.

Lt. Col. Bill Cage (Cruise) is an officer who has never seen a day of combat when he is unceremoniously demoted and then 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, impossibly, 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 has thrown him into a time loop — dooming him to live out the same brutal combat over and over.

But with each pass, Cage becomes tougher, smarter, and able to engage the Mimics with increasing skill, alongside Special Forces warrior Rita Vrataski (Blunt), who has lain waste to more Mimics than anyone on Earth. As Cage and Rita take the fight to the aliens, each repeated battle becomes an opportunity to find the key to annihilating the alien invaders and saving the Earth.

Cruise and Blunt lead an international cast that also includes Bill Paxton, Jonas Armstrong, Tony Way, Kick Gurry, Franz Drameh, Dragomir Mrsic and Charlotte Riley.

Liman (“Swingers” and “Mr. & Mrs. Smith”) is directing the film from a screenplay by Dante Harper, Christopher McQuarrie and Joby Harold, based on the acclaimed novel All You Need is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka. Erwin Stoff, Gregory Jacobs and Jeffrey Silver are the producers. The executive producers are Jason Hoffs, Joby Harold, Doug Liman, Dave Bartis, Tom Lassally, Hidemi Fukuhara, Thomas Tull, Jon Jashni, Alex Garcia and Bruce Berman, with Tim Lewis and Kim Winther serving as co-producers.

The behind-the-scenes team includes Academy Award-winning director of photography Dion Beebe, production designer Oliver Scholl, editor James Herbert, costume designer Kate Hawley and Oscar-nominated visual effects supervisor Nick Davis.

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