Last year, director Ridley Scott shocked “Blade Runner” fans with the announcement that a live-action series was in the works at rights holders Alcon. Scott stopped short of giving concrete details about the series’ setting or where it would air. The news was a big surprise considering that the last film, “Blade Runner 2049,” directed by Denis Villeneuve and starring Ryan Gosling, wasn’t exactly a box office hit, which seemingly meant the franchise wouldn’t continue.
Thankfully, new information has been revealed today. According to a report from Deadline, the show will be called “Blade Runner 2099” telegraphing the year the show will be set, many years after the original film and its sequel “Blade Runner 2049.” The show has also landed at Amazon, allowing for a budget that fits the massive effects-focused world of Replicants and off-world colonies. They’re behind the billion-dollar fantasy series “Lord of The Rings: The Rings of Power,” adding another notch in their genre belts.
“Shining Girls” showrunner Silka Luisa will be writing the sci-fi show and executive producing alongside Ridley Scott. The outlet adds that Scott may direct episodes as he did with his HBO Max show “Raised By Wolves” but would likely have to wait until he’s done with his next film “Napoleon” at Apple, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby.
Jumping fifty years into the future would give the impression that Harrison Ford’s Deckard would be long gone and could suggest that other characters from the films might not be coming back either, allowing creatives a bit of blank slate to write new stories within the cyberpunk world of “Blade Runner.”
Blade Runners are human cops assigned to “retire” humanoid robots, aka, Replicants, when they’ve been discovered on Earth, after escaping the various off-world colonies as forced mining labor and soldiers in never-ending intergalactic wars. Earth is on the cusp of being uninhabitable to the massive human population and the last two films took place in a reimagined Los Angeles.
There is no mention of involvement of Villeneuve, who is currently busy with “Dune Part Two,” “Dune: The Sisterhood,” and “Rendezvous With Rama.” However, we can’t entirely rule out the French-Canadian filmmaker giving his blessings or contributing in the future.