Warners appear to have canned, or at least postponed, their new Three Musketeers, in the light of the competition from Paul WS Anderson's 3D version, which is out next April. Bad news for director Doug Liman, you might think, but he's wasted no time finding redeployment: Deadline are reporting that Liman has his eye on Warners' pending high-concept sci-fi **All You Need is Kill.
Based on a Japanese novel by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, for which Warners paid an astronomical sum earlier this year, All You Need is Kill involves a soldier killed in action fighting aliens and then inexplicably having to re-fight his final battle until he gets it right. It's Groundhog Day meets Starship Troopers! It feels afraid again and again.
Weirdly, Liman may not dodge the competing-projects bullet if he opts for this, since Duncan Jones' Source Code is on very similar life-repeating-soldier territory. Maybe he'd be better to plump for one of the other projects he's been circling: a Coen Brothers-scripted remake of the Michael Caine / Shirley McClaine vehicle Gambit; prison drama Attica; and an untitled Jake Gyllenhaal film about the Moon. And what the hell happened to Jumper 2, eh?*
Warners, given the money they've spent on it, will want to get All You Need is Kill underway sharpish, we're guessing, but there's no start-date quite yet. Liman's most recent effort Fair Game, with Sean Penn and Naomi Watts, is out later in the year.
*Don't answer that.