Ridley Scott might be 88 years old, but retirement doesn’t appear to be anywhere on the horizon. The legendary filmmaker is currently promoting his 30th feature, The Dog Stars, while simultaneously preparing Treasure Island, developing another Alien prequel and juggling several other potential projects through Scott Free. One franchise that apparently won’t be returning to his already packed directing schedule, however, is Blade Runner. More than four decades after Scott https://movizark.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/bladerunner.jpgand Harrison Ford introduced audiences to its dystopian future, the director has revealed that the franchise effectively slipped out of his hands.
Speaking with the Los Angeles Times, Scott confirmed that he had no involvement with Prime Video’s upcoming sequel series, Blade Runner 2099, which is set to continue the franchise later this year. Scott explained that the rights situation ultimately left him without control over the world he helped bring to the screen:
“I can’t blame my lawyers and my agents at that time, but somehow we let ‘Blade Runner’ go. And when you’re not the author of the actual written word, you don’t have a piece.”
Will Ridley Scott Make a Blade Runner Sequel?
That means Blade Runner 2099 will move the franchise forward without the filmmaker responsible for the original movie. The series is currently scheduled to premiere on Prime Video in November 2026. Scott and original scribe Hampton Fancher had discussed a second Blade Runner as far back as around 1986. Fancher later revealed that he’d devised a story about Deckard’s next job, although that version was never produced, and now, Scott admits he’s still trying to live up to that writer/director relationship that began on Blade Runner.
“‘Blade Runner’ was the best writer relationship I ever had. In the first 19 pages of that book there are 200 stories, and he chose one, about the hunter who had fallen in love with his quarry. The cadence is beautiful. The grace of it was fantastic.”
However, perhaps most chillingly, Scott believes he won’t need to make a sequel with Ford to see Blade Runner’s ideas come to fruition. More than 40 years later, Scott feels we’re increasingly moving towards the future his movie imagined. “We’re headed there now. [Tyrell] has got one of the two corporations that’s running the world. Who’s to stop you from having an army of 10,000 people and 200 Black Hawks if you’ve got that kind of money? So ‘Blade Runner’ is coming to fruition as we speak.”
Scott’s latest movie, The Dog Stars, opens in theaters on August 28.
via Collider