Plenty of box-office flops have found a new lease of life in the world of home entertainment. Films as iconic as The Big Lebowski, Fight Club and The Shawshank Redemption all sunk without a trace at cinemas before transforming, phoenix-like, into near-ubiquitous stocking fillers. Of course, such turnarounds are rare, and impossible to predict. As the team behind Snakes On A Plane found out with a start, you can’t force a cult success.
For one of this summer’s biggest blockbusters, however, there may be no other option. Despite taking $369m at the box office, the Tom Cruise-starring action spectacular Edge Of Tomorrow failed to break even, thanks to a visual-effects budget big enough to make Cruise’s eight-figure salary look like peanuts. Eager to turn their luck around, Warner Bros have made the unprecedented decision to throw a $100m marketing campaign to the wind and rename the film for home viewing. In an exceptionally literal interpretation of the movie’s plot, in which Cruise’s soldier must stave off a third world war by reliving the same critical day over and over again, Edge Of Tomorrow will henceforth be known as Live Die Repeat.
Presumably coined by an overworked studio marketeer seeking inspiration from the back of a shampoo bottle, this new title is actually a more fitting descriptor than the film’s blandly identikit original name. But still, this 11th-hour overhaul risks sacrificing the one thing that Edge Of Tomorrow has on its side: word of mouth. This twisty sci-fi adventure actually has a lot going for it. The “Groundhog Day meets Starship Troopers” narrative concept works well, while Cruise displays a vulnerability we haven’t seen from him since Vanilla Sky. Unlike the vast majority of this year’s summer blockbusters, Edge Of Tomorrow is exactly the kind of film people will want to tell their friends about. If only they knew what to call it.
DVD, Warner Bros
Also out this week
The Other Woman Occasionally energised squabble of the sexes.
Grace Of Monaco Staggeringly bad Grace Kelly biopic.
Supermensch Profile of Hollywood mega-manager Shep Gordon.
