… And will Christopher Nolan or Ridley Scott be involved?
Blade Runner — the 1982 sci-fi classic — is one of those films that, for numerous reasons, gets near-universally praise (it has a 92% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which is about as good as it gets). Part of the reason why is that the film was made during arguably star Harrison Ford’s and director Ridley Scott’s most creative respective periods. While the film itself went through various cuts and edits over the years (a story too lengthy to get into here!), there has never been a film sequel to Blade Runner. However, according to Coming Soon, Alcon Entertainment, a division of Warner Bros., has received the rights to make prequels and sequels to Blade Runner — but thankfully according to the press release, “Alcon’s franchise rights would be all-inclusive, but exclude rights to remake the original. The Company, however, may produce projects based on situations introduced in the original film.”
So what does this mean? It means that Alcon Entertainment can more-or-less create any film set in the “universe” introduced in Blade Runner, but does not have the rights to remake the original film. This curiously sounds a lot like Ridley Scott’s upcoming Prometheus project, which is reportedly a non-Alien film set in the Alien universe. It’s a great idea, I think — it allows people to “play” in an established universe without screwing everything up (Highlander 2, I’m looking at you!) In fact, this has already been done for Blade Runner —Soldier, a 1998 film starring Kurt Russell has been said by writer David Peoples (who co-wrote Blade Runner) takes place in the same universe as Blade Runner. In fact, sharp-eyed viewers can glimpse the wreckage of a spinner in Soldier. However, should Alcon go for a direct sequel or prequel to Blade Runner you might hear much more fan backlash, of course.
Furthermore, in an interview with io9.com, the hypothetical Blade Runner franchise producers Andrew Kosove, Broderick Johnson, and Bud Yorkin teased Ridley Scott’s possible involvement, with Kosove saying “The answer to that question is as follows. I’m going to answer it very briefly — we won’t say if we’ve reached out to Ridley Scott or not, but what we will say is that Ridley Scott’s blessing to what we’re doing is very important to Alcon.” To up the ante, Kosove also namedrops friend Christopher Nolan several times as someone he’d like to see direct the film. I think just about every producer in Hollywood wants Nolan to direct their films, too!
What are your thoughts on a Blade Runner franchise? Let us know your thoughts below!
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