Warners Wants Brad Pitt For Time-Looping Video Game-Inspired ‘All You Need Is Kill’?
Is this theAkirasituation all over again? You might remember that a few months ago, when Warner Bros. was really trying to get the live-action version ofAkiragoing under the direction of Albert Hughes, there were a great many stories about how the studio wanted to cast the film. The primary thrust seemed to be that the teenage characters in the original manga and anime were going to be significantly older in the live-action version. That all became a non-issue whenHughes bowed outand the film was slowed-down as it wasre-budgetedand set up for Jaume Collet-Serra to direct, however.
The same thing could be happening again, however, with the adaptation ofHiroshi Sakurazaka’sAll You Need is Kill, for whichBrad Pittis reportedly being sought.
Now, first thing: it’s Brad Pitt, and everyone wants Brad Pitt. So even withDoug Limanset to direct the film, let’s not assume that Pitt will end up starring.
But the protagonist ofAll You Need is Killis a young soldier in a futuristic war against aliens. He is killed in a massive battle, but wakes up alive once more, eighteen hours or so before he was killed. Yeah, thinkStarship TroopersmeetsGroundhog Day. Here’s how I recapped the script some time ago:
The young solider is a lackluster fighter at first, but he becomes caught in a Groundhog Day-style time loop, and has to relive the battle over and over. It isn’t as repetitive as the basic idea sounds, however, as the solider realizes his predicament and starts to approach it almost like a video game in which he has infinite lives. Basically take that ‘Starship Troopers meets Groundhog Day’ idea and infuse it with a healthy videogame sensibility.
Key there being ‘young.’ Brad Pitt is not young. The script was expensive and the film will be expensive, and the studio likely wants someone who’ll be able to provide a real assist at the box office. There aren’t many young actors who can do that. A better idea: cast young, and sell the idea, and things will work. The script isn’t bad; it has a good, propulsive energy and some great action, so there’s material to work with. But from a financing and sales perspective, Pitt would make things easier, even if he’s not right for the role. And he’s not, since he’s twenty years too old.
Vulturereports WB’s interest in Pitt, and also says that rewrites have fixed some third act issues. Specifically, the site says,
Thing is, that gaming influence wasn’t the problem with the third act. That was the fun part. The character becomes a real badass, but you get the sense of him having earned it. I say this as someone who loves games, but thinks that most gaming influence in film is articulated in very much the wrong way.Killseems like it has the potential to work, even in the 18-month old draft I read.
There were other problems — not huge ones, but still problems — and we’ll hope that while the focus might have been on livening up the action, maybe the character and plotting bits that stuck for me were also fixed. (And maybe the new third act really is a lot better, from an action perspective.)
Vulture also says that this all comes about after David Ellison’s Skydance Productions decided not to co-finance Doug Liman’s Paramount-housed filmLuna, about a heist in space. That’s leading to new momentum onAll You Need is Kill, sinceLunahad previously been the director’smain interest.
