Ridley Scott Takes On Directing Duties For Upcoming Blade Runner Film
For a long time, Carl Rinsch sat in the director’s seat on the Alien film Ridley Scott was producing. Eventually, Rinsch left and Scott stepped up to helm the return to the series that he so lovingly created back in 1979. Well, with a Blade Runner update now in the works, Scott, the original film’s director, has taken up captain’s duties here as well to help usher another of his classics into the new millennium.
There’s still no real indication of what kind of film this will be–whether a remake, a sequel, or like the upcoming Alien connected film Prometheus, a prequel–but regardless of how you feel about any of these directions, Ridley Scott directing means that we can rest assured it’s going to be good. Very good. Scott’s track record is unmatched in the science fiction genre, a genre he helped define yet neglected for nigh 30 year.
For now the details are limited just to that it’s a movie set in the Blade Runner universe, and that Scott is back on board. But don’t be surprised if, like Prometheus, the story evolves into something almost completely different. No writers have been attached, though judging by Scott’s experience with Prometheus co-writer and LOST creator Damon Lindelof, don’t be shocked if you see his name attached in the near future.
I still maintain, as I have since March when Alcon Entertainment acquired the rights to the franchise and announced their intentions, that Blade Runner is a film that doesn’t need to be remade. It pushed boundaries in 1982 when it was released both visual and philosophically, and it still pushes boundaries on both fronts today. However, the world Scott built from Philip K. Dick’s short story is so vast that to not revisit it would be criminal, and there’s no better man to take us back than the man who originally brought us there in the first place, Ridley Scott. Get excited, folks.
UPDATE! The LA Times has added a few more details on this project. The movie, whatever form it ends up taking, may not show up in theaters until 2014. When it does, they’re adamant that Harrison Ford, who played Decker in the original movie, will not be involved at all.
