It's eighteen months since director Doug Liman jumped aboard All You Need Is Kill, but the fact that it's still a going concern has just been confirmed by the report that Tom Cruise is close to signing as its star.
Based on a Japanese novel by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, for which Warners paid an astronomical sum in early 2010, All You Need is Kill involves a soldier killed in action fighting aliens and then inexplicably having to re-endure his final battle until he gets it right. It's Groundhog Day meets Starship Troopers! It feels afraid again and again.
It also, obviously, bears some superficial similarity to this year's Source Code. But with Cruise currently working on One Shot and expected to then move into Oblivion, and Liman hoping to be busy in the near future with** Luna**, it could well turn out that by the time Kill goes before the cameras, let alone by the time it gets released, Source Code will be comfortably distant in people's minds.
Cruise has yet to sign on the line, but apparently made encouraging enough noises that the screenplay by Dante Harper and Jody Harold has been retro-fitted to accommodate his age. Shooting is currently expected in the second half of 2012.