New Blade Runner Series Coming To Amazon Prime Video From Ridley Scott, Our Scoop Confirmed
According to a report by Deadline, Prime Video has given the green light to a new Amazon Studios series based on Ridley Scott‘s 1982 science fiction drama Blade Runner, which Scott will executive produce. We previously reported that a Blade Runner series was in development, which has now been confirmed. The new series will be called Blade Runner 2099 and will be a continuation of the events outlined in the 2017 film Blade Runner 2049, directed by Denis Villeneuve.
The initial Blade Runner film starred Harrison Ford, Dutch actor Rutger Hauer, and Sean Young. It was based on the Philip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, about a dystopian era in Los Angeles set in the year 2019 where Ford plays a gruff police officer named Rick Deckard, tasked with hunting down a group of fugitive synthetic humans known as replicants, led by Hauer’s Roy Batty. Dick was also responsible for inspirations to similar movies of the 1980s to 2000s, including Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Total Recall, Tom Cruise’s Minority Report, and Richard Linklater’s A Scanner Darkly.
Blade Runner was not a big hit when it was released in theaters in 1982, even though Harrison Ford was a big draw at the time due to his popularity from the Star Wars franchise. The film went on to gross over $41 million at the box office against a budget of $30 million. However, its neo-noir crime thriller themes and the movie’s production design made it one of the biggest cult classics to come out of the 1980s, creating new generations of fans over the course of 40 years.
The original film’s popularity long after its release seemed to have made Warner Bros. Pictures and Sony Pictures interested in continuing into more of a franchise model, which in turn helped to develop 2017’s Blade Runner 2049. The second project in the franchise starred Ryan Gosling in the newly created role of a character named K, while Harrison Ford reprised his part as Rick Deckard. With a cast that included Robin Wright and Ana de Armas, Blade Runner 2049 went on to gross over $250 million against a budget of $185 million, marking a more significant financial take than the previous film’s haul. There was also a 2021 anime series spin-off Blade Runner: Black Lotus.
With renewed interest in a Blade Runner franchise, audiences may be interested in checking out Blade Runner 2099. No cast has been confirmed yet for the Prime Video series, and there is no indication as to when fans should expect the new project to debut on the subscription streaming platform. But, as the title of the show suggests, Blade Runner 2099 will be set 50 years after the sequel.
When director Ridley Scott started his career in science fiction movies, audiences seemed to embrace his crafty filmmaking techniques and his stylized approach to storytelling. He came to prominence with the 1979 film Alien, which eventually spawned several sequels and a franchise that continues to this day.
