A Tomorrow War sequel is already in early development

Director Chris McKay’s The Tomorrow War wasn’t exactly a revolutionarily unique sci-fi action movie, but it is a movie with a big star and pretty general appeal that Amazon Prime subscribers can watch for free, making it (supposedly) a reasonably big hit for the streaming platform—though it wasn’t originally an Amazon project, since the company picked up the rights to it after it lost its theatrical release because of COVID. Naturally, then, Amazon Studios and Skydance are eager to stay in the Tomorrow War business, with Deadline reporting that the two studios are currently in talks with original distributor Paramount to produce a sequel to the film, with main cast members Chris Pratt, Yvonne Strahovski, Sam Richardson, Betty Gilpin, Edwin Hodge, and J.K. Simmons set to return (in addition to McKay, who would once again direct).

The plot of the first movie was based around people from the future going back in time to recruit people in the present for a future war against aliens, with humanity—spoiler alert—eventually defeating the aliens in the precent before the war ever happened. Time travel being what it is, that opens all sorts of potential doors for a sequel, whether it’s something boring like going into space to find where the aliens came from or something a little more wacky like alternate timelines converging together to create some kind of war between different Chris Pratts. Or maybe, instead of aliens, they’ll fight climate change and call it The Day After Tomorrow War. Badum tsssh.

Assuming this all works out, it would mean Chris Pratt landing a second big action franchise that sits outside of the Marvel umbrella, giving him some measure of control over a thing he can do beyond playing Star-Lord or boringly clicking his fingers at boring dinosaurs. Nobody wants to see him in an Indiana Jones movie anymore, and those Jurassic World movies could easily cut him out and nobody would notice or care, so—however you may feel about The Tomorrow War as a franchise, especially considering that this one probably wouldn’t have Mike “Mr. Slice” Mitchell from Doughboys—this might be a big step in his continued viability as a movie star. (We’ll leave it up for debate about whether or not that’s a good thing for the rest of us.)