Early in March of this year the Warner Bros company Alcon Entertainment bought the film, television and ancillary franchise rights to Blade Runner, to produce prequels and sequels, spin-offs and reboots at will.
Sending an initial shudder through the legion of fans, both of the 1982 film and of Philip K. Dick’s source novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, there were projections of diluted returns to the neon infused dystopia so beautifully rendered in Ridley Scott’s film.
A series of three novels set after the events of the film acted as a sequel of sorts and were written by Dick’s friend K. W. Jeter, beginning with Blade Runner 2: The Edge of Human. An early PC CD-Rom game based in the world was released in 1997 but the unexpected news today promises an altogether brighter future for one of the most beloved and influential movies in the sci-fi genre.
Deadline are reporting that when Ridley Scott is finished with Prometheus, his next walk in the Alien-verse, he will take on another Blade Runner film for Alcon, allaying fears that we would end up with a McG directed Blade Runnerer: Time to Die or somesuch nonsense.
Given the path of Scott’s current film from conception as an Alien prequel to a whole new film set in the universe there is every chance that this one will be neither a sequel or prequel (Deadline aren’t too sure themselve) but a new film set in the world of the Tyrell Corporation and Replicant technology.
Two things are for sure – it’ll be in 3D, and there won’t be a voiceover. Let’s hope they don’t around to the production for some time, and end up releasing the film in 2019, the year in which the first film was set.
