A Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049 sequel series is heading to Prime Video.
According to Deadline, Blade Runner 2099 will be executive produced by original Blade Runner director Ridley Scott, along with writer Silk Luisa. Scott is reportedly also in consideration to direct the project, which is being fast-tracked at Amazon Studios.
"We [have already] written the pilot for Blade Runner and the bible. So, we’re already presenting Blade Runner as a TV show, the first 10 hours," Scott previously said about the then-untitled Blade Runner sequel series.
Released in 1982, Blade Runner is inspired by Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and centers on former LAPD officer Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), who's tasked with tracking down bioengineered human-like beings called replicants in the year 2019. The film is viewed by many as one of the most influential science fiction movies of all time, and its nebulous ending -- which left it unclear whether Deckard himself was a replicant -- has continued to captivated fans in the decades since.
In 2019 (coincidentally the year the first film took place), a sequel entitled Blade Runner 2049 was released, this time directed by Denis Villeneuve and starring Ryan Gosling as an actual replicant blade runner named K. In dealing with the Tyrell Corporation from the first movie, he comes into contact with Deckard, and the film ends with the original protagonist meeting his daughter.
"Yeah, we've been chatting about it," Ford coyly said in 2014 when it was being reported that he'd reprise Deckard in Blade Runner 2049. "I truly admire Ridley as a man and as a director. I would be very happy to engage again with him in the further telling of this story."
Of course, it was Villeneuve who went on to direct that film rather than Scott, and in 2020, he expressed interest in returning to the Blade Runner franchise. "It’s such an inspiring place, the Blade Runner world," he said. "The problem [I] have is the word ‘sequel.’ I think cinema needs original stories. But if you ask me if I’d like to revisit this universe in a different way, I can say yes. It would need to be a project on its own. Something disconnected from both other movies. A detective noir story set in the future… I wake up sometimes in the night dreaming about it."
Blade Runner 2099 has yet to receive a premiere date.
Source: Deadline