Mid-Week Poll: Are You Excited for a ‘Blade Runner’ Sequel?

Building off the recent Comic-Con buzz for next year’s ‘Alien’ prequel, it was announced last week that Ridley Scott is also working on a sequel to his seminal science fiction film ‘Blade Runner’. Is this a good idea or a very, very bad one? Vote after the break.

Make no mistake; I love ‘Blade Runner‘. It’s one of the greatest science fiction movies ever made. However, I can’t help being leery of this talk about a sequel. The original film stands perfectly on its own. Too much time has passed, and Ridley Scott is simply not the director he used to be. Honestly, I don’t think he’s made much of anything worthwhile since ‘Blade Runner’. I fear that a sequel this late in the game would only be a pale shadow of the original, if not an outright desecration.

At this early stage, the project has barely even started development. No writer has been hired, much less a script been written. Scott and his producers at Alcon Entertainment haven’t even decided whether the movie will be a sequel or a prequel. The only thing for certain right now is that it will not be a remake. That much was actually dictated in the contract when Alcon acquired the rights to the property. I’d venture a guess that Harrison Ford will not return. He and Ridley Scott had a miserable working relationship the first time around, and Ford has stated many times that he hates the film.

Personally, I think that a direct sequel or prequel to the original storyline is a bad idea. On the other hand, I’d be open to a new story that happens to be set in the same universe as ‘Blade Runner’ without many direct ties to the prior plot or characters. That’s reportedly the approach that Scott is taking with ‘Prometheus’, his ‘Alien’ prequel/not-really-a-prequel. (‘Prometheus’ also has the advantage of following in the footsteps of several previous sequels of varying quality, so the franchise’s legacy is harder to tarnish. That’s not the case with ‘Blade Runner’.)

What do you think of this news?

Are You Excited for a 'Blade Runner' Sequel?

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11 comments

  1. I’d love to see more of the Blade Runner franchise! But I don’t want Harrison Ford to have anything to do with it. He’s just too old, and his character’s storyline just wouldn’t be all that interesting if it were continued after so long. Not that Ford would come back. I don’t think he’s the sort of actor to re-visit a character (not including Indiana Jones, of course) after such a long break.

    And yes, Ridley has gotten a bit slack since his early days, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t pull it off again.

    I just hope any prequels/sequels or continuations will be in the same vein as the original: highly stylized and dreary, and full of art and mood.

  2. Jane Morgan

    ‘Blade Runner: 2069’ should be a reboot of the universe.

    Instead of a 1982 visual projection of a 2019 dystopian Los Angeles, it should be a 2012 vision of 50-70 years in the future. Post singularity.

    They might have to genre-shift, into an action movie, in order to get the budget they’ll need to do the universe justice.

    If only they could build ‘Blade Runner’ around the spine of the ‘Oldboy’ reboot, with Scott producing, Fincher directing, and a villainous James Hong.

  3. motorheadache

    I wouldn’t mind seeing Ford in the movie– maybe not as the main character, but have some kind of role in the story.

    Does Ford really hate the movie? I know he hated having to add narration to the film, but I didn’t know he just plain flat out disliked the film.

  4. To my knowledge Ford’s biggest gripe was over the narration – not any anger towards Ridley, although he did say it was a “hard shoot.”

    That said, I doubt he would do it again, and I doubt he would ask…if Ridley uses Ford, that means he has to use Sean Young, and no one wants to go there. 🙂

    • Josh Zyber
      Author

      Ford hated just about everything about Blade Runner. He and Scott clashed constantly over Scott’s perfectionism in making sure that every background detail in every shot was exactly what he wanted. Ford said that he felt his performance was overshadowed by the set decoration. Coming off of Star Wars and Raiders, I’m sure that he expected to have a more heroic role as well.

      Ford and Sean Young also despised one another.

  5. A prequel with the escape of the Roy, Pris etc heading back to Earth might be fun. It would be in the same universe but it would still have a lot of freedom as you haven’t seen any of it before. It would still be better than the Jeter books, they were suppose to be a sequel to the movie but J F Sebastian died in the film but was back in Blade Runner 2!

  6. I wish the sequel would be nothing more than an adaptation of the book. The book is so very different from the original movie that I think all they would have to do is tweak the names to make it work.

  7. Brian H

    Blade Runner’s visuals alone make a sequel/prequel something of a lost cause.

    The fact that there is so much substantively in Blade Runner to appreciate begs what further would be explored in a sequel/prequel.

    Finally though, a sequel/prequel would be trying to imitate or continue upon a box office bomb that didn’t win an Oscar, and wasn’t a licensing windfall.

    I expect at some point to see another adaptation of the book (featuring a sheep, a goat and perhaps Mercerism). Looking at the various edits of the movie, and other incarnations of the story (the game, the comics, etc.) is part of the appreciation and analysis.

    Most people will tell you that they did not enjoy Blade Runner that one time they had to watch it in art class, so fans are already used to people missing the point so to speak- a sequel/prequel won’t change that.

  8. I ticked the ‘cautiously optimistic’. Scott is flawed sometimes, but he does seem to be at his best when doing science fiction. Though a big part of me screams why does he have to do a sequel, why not do something new??? Maybe even set in the same universe, but why ‘Blade Runner 2’? (Or given the trend with these things, it’ll probably be called Blade Runners!)