Prometheus Blu-Ray Producer Dismisses Possible Blade Runner Connection
You can put down the torches and pitchforks now.
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Last week the interwebs caught fire after somebody spotted an Easter egg on the Prometheus Blu-ray/DVD release that appeared to — just possibly — tied the world of Ridley Scott’s latest SF flick into the world of Blade Runner. The item in question is a memo written by “Peter Weyland” where he discusses his mentor, an unnamed chap who worked to create “genetic abominations” and who sounds an awful lot like Blade Runner’s Eldon Tyrell. The connection isn’t that far fetched, obviously, since both films were directed by Ridley Scott, and he is supposedly working on another Blade Runner film. Could this Easter egg be Scott’s way of hinting that he’s going to bring the Blade Runner into the Alien mythology the same way he did with Prometheus?
In a word: no. You Blade Runner fans out there can stop hyperventilating and put away the pitchforks, because the Weyland memo is purely and simply a wink at the fans. That was confirmed by Prometheus Blu-ray producer Charles de Lauzirika, who also worked on the excellent Alien Anthology releases. Speaking to Movies.com, de Lauzirika said the mysterious Weyland memo is just a case of him “having fun and being cutesy.” You can read his full comments on the subject below.
‘That was me having fun and being cutesy,’ said a laughing Charles de Lauzirika when asked about the connection. ‘I wrote all that stuff. I actually said this at the press conference they had in London, which is that if it’s in the film, it’s canon. I would argue that the viral pieces that are included in the Peter Weyland Files are canon just because they originated with Ridley and Damon Lindelof. I would say those, to some degree, are canon. But anything else – especially these which are kind of like little cute, embedded text graphics on the menus – I wouldn’t take those too seriously. It’s just meant to be an in-universe framework for those viral pieces.
‘As a Blade Runner fan, and because there’s been so much talk before this even occurred with people on the Internet speculating that maybe Alien and Blade Runner and Prometheus could all exist in the same universe, it was just more of a wink at that. Absolutely nothing to be taken seriously. I mean, I sent it to Ridley and he had no comment. [Laughs] So, it’s just icing on top of icing. It’s not the cake. It’s a fun, little side thing that’s very superficial. And, by the way, it in no way officially establishes that it’s Blade Runner because, if a lawyer were to comb through that, there’s no reference to Tyrell or anything in Blade Runner. It’s just a very lightly intentioned joke.’
That’s news that will let many genre fans breathe a sigh of relief. Many are skeptical about Scott returning to the Blade Runner universe at all after this many years, and the thought that it could be shoehorned into the canon of another franchise has all the hallmarks of a disaster. If the Alien vs. Predator movies have taught us anything, it’s that mixing two awesome things together doesn’t always result in something even more awesome. Sometimes it just results in a giant pile of crap.
Finally, here’s the Weyland memo that started this whole fracas in the first place.
