Ridley Scott Wants Harrison Ford In Blade Runner 2 In Some Capacity
Amidst the massive PR push for Prometheus, a campaign almost as epic as the film itself, bits of news about Ridley Scott’s possible Blade Runner sequel continue to float to the surface. From what we’ve heard so far, Scott’s return to another of his most beloved sci-fi universes will be a sequel not a prequel—set years after the events of Blade Runner—that original screenwriter Hampton Fancher is in talks to tackle the script, and the film will likely feature a female protagonist.
Harrison Ford, who played replicant hunter Rick Deckard in Blade Runner, will not be the protagonist of the sequel, but in an interview with The Independent Scott briefly quipped that he might like to get Ford into the mix. He said, “I don’t think it’ll be Harry [starring]. But I’ve got to have him in it somewhere. That’d be amusing.”
Amusing is not exactly how I would have put it, but can’t you just hear the cheers in the theater at a midnight screening of Blade Runner 2 as Harrison Ford pops up for a quick line or two. Maybe Scott doesn’t even envision Ford as Deckard, maybe he’ll toss him in as a supply clerk or grizzled bartender. At this point everything is so up in the air that it’s all wild conjecture, but what the hell, conjecture is fun, and a Blade Runner movie won’t feel like a Blade Runner movie without a few frames of Ford.
No matter what happens with the Blade Runner sequel, whether it materializes or not, Scott is busy prepping his next film, The Counselor, based on a script from Pulitzer Prize-winner Cormac McCarthy (No Country For Old Men). That’s another film I’m super pumped about, but for vastly different reasons.
In the interview, Scott also says he had a vastly different end in mind for Ripley in Alien:
I thought that when the alien went for her in the shuttle, he should actually slam his fist through her helmet and kill her. Then you cut to the desk, and a shadow of the alien’s head comes over, and the finger of the alien starts tapping out coordinates, with obvious intelligence… But when I suggested that to the studio, they had an executive out there on set within 24 hours, saying, ‘You will not do that!’. And I guess they were right, because Sigourney made a great run of Ripley.
That would have been one hell of a game changer.
