Tom Cruise vehicle Edge of Tomorrow bombed at the box office, so it’s getting a new title

The Tom Cruise vehicle Edge of Tomorrow was one of the best movies of the summer, featuring one of its most audacious concepts and, in Emily Blunt's Rita, one of the year's best female characters (in a year that has not exactly been brimming with great female characters, particularly in mainstream Hollywood films). Naturally, it completely bombed at the box office. Having made just under $100 million might mark the film as a success in some circles, but that's against a $178 million budget, so… not so great. (The movie performed better overseas, where it made over $264 million, but because of marketing costs and what cut of ticket sales the studio is allowed to take home, it is very, very unlikely the film is in the black yet.)

Warner Brothers, the studio behind the film, has decided that what kept the movie from success was its title, according to Criticwire's Sam Adams. This isn't such a bad assumption, considering Edge of Tomorrow sounds like one of the terrible Pierce Brosnan James Bond movies or maybe a film about a young woman and a gentle cowhand who share one summer of forbidden passion amid the African veldt. It does not sound like a movie where Tom Cruise fights a war against aliens by dying endlessly, then being resurrected every time with the knowledge needed to get a few steps further in the next life.

Thus, Warner Brothers has renamed the film, an unprecedented step in this day and age, replacing Edge of Tomorrow with its much better advertising tagline: Live Die Repeat. On the DVD cover, EdgeofTomorrow gets smushed into one word right next to the words "Cruise" and "Blunt" along the bottom of the DVD.

Cruise/Blunt/EdgeofTomorrow

Also, as discovered by The Film Stage, the film is actually being retitled entirely on iTunes, where it now goes by Live Die Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow.

It's a bit of a desperate play by Warner Brothers to make a movie that didn't do very well into a bigger hit on DVD and Blu-Ray. Will it work? Probably not. But if it does, look out for Beware the Cloud: Sex Tape and No, We Didn't Just Rip Off E.T.: Earth to Echo replacing the titles of two of this summer's other notable bombs.

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