Every­thing we know about Blade Run­ner 2049

A sequel to Blade Run­ner has been bounc­ing around the inner cham­bers of Hol­ly­wood for near­ly a decade, but at long last we real­ly will be return­ing to the world dreamt up by direc­tor Rid­ley Scott and author Philip K Dick. With Vari­ety recent­ly report­ing that Robin Wright is set to join the cast, we’ve head­ed on a minia­ture trea­sure hunt in search of every scrap of infor­ma­tion we can about this high­ly anticipated/​feared/​controversial [delete as applic­a­ble] sci-fi blockbuster.

Scott first brought up the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a Blade Run­ner sequel at Com­ic-Con in 2007, and since then the poten­tial blue­print has gone through sev­er­al dif­fer­ent iter­a­tions. In 2009, the New York Times report­ed that he and his broth­er Tony were work­ing on a series of web shorts col­lec­tive­ly titled Pure­fold, which would serve as a pre­quel of sorts to the orig­i­nal. How­ev­er, the con­nec­tion was to be tan­gen­tial at best: Ag8, the stu­dio set to make the series, had no rights to any mate­r­i­al from Philip K Dick’s estate.

After Pure­fold was shelved the fol­low­ing year due to finan­cial prob­lems, Warn­er Bros began look­ing at poten­tial cin­e­mat­ic pre­quels and sequels. Christo­pher Nolan, hot off the com­mer­cial suc­cess of The Dark Knight Ris­es, was put for­ward as a pos­si­ble choice for director.

But in August of 2011, Scott announced he was back on the project, adding that it would start film­ing no lat­er than 2013. Con­sid­er­ing Scott’s sched­ule at that point includ­ed pro­mo­tion of his Alien pre­quel Prometheus, work­ing on The Coun­sel­lor with Cor­mac McCarthy, and begin­ning devel­op­ment of Bib­li­cal epic Exo­dus: Gods and Kings, his plan could char­i­ta­bly be described as opti­mistic. As his sights turned to Andy Weir’s nov­el ​‘The Mar­t­ian’ in 2014, Scott moved to a pro­duc­er role, his suc­ces­sor at that point uncertain. 

Enter Denis Vil­leneuve, direc­tor of Pris­on­ers, Ene­my and most recent­ly Sicario. Vil­leneuve is a direc­tor who enjoys stick­ing to the shad­ows, both visu­al­ly and the­mat­i­cal­ly, so his appoint­ment made per­fect sense con­sid­er­ing the rain-slick neo-noir tones of the orig­i­nal. Add cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Roger Deakins to the mix, who worked with Vil­leneuve on Pris­on­ers and Sicario and earned two Oscar nom­i­na­tions for his trou­ble, and the prospect only becomes more exciting.

Some more of the old guard will be return­ing: Hamp­ton Fanch­er, writer of the orig­i­nal Blade Run­ner, has devel­oped the sto­ry with him, and they’ll be work­ing on it togeth­er with Heroes and Green Lantern writer Michael Green. The most excit­ing is the news that Har­ri­son Ford will be return­ing to reprise the role of boun­ty hunter (and pos­si­ble Repli­cant) Rick Deckard.

But what will his role be? Ryan Gosling, who joined the cast in Novem­ber, seems to be our nom­i­nal lead, so it makes sense to cast Deckard as some kind of old­er men­tor type – but Scott has dropped hints that he won’t be turn­ing up until the third act of the movie. So will he be join­ing the action as Han Solo did in The Force Awak­ens? Or will he be the Luke Sky­walk­er to Ryan Gosling’s Rey, a near-myth­ic fig­ure from whom the pro­tag­o­nist seeks answers?

Very lit­tle of the sto­ry has been revealed so far: Scott has hint­ed at a sequence tak­ing place in the Wyoming dust-bowl that was intend­ed for the orig­i­nal film. Could this serve as the open­ing scene? What we do know, how­ev­er, rais­es tan­ta­lis­ing ques­tions. It’s been estab­lished that the sto­ry takes place decades after the orig­i­nal sto­ry which was set in 2019. 

Con­sid­er­ing the film’s Repli­cants are giv­en a lifes­pan of only four years, this throws into sharp relief the old debate – not helped by con­flict­ing answers in dif­fer­ent cuts of the film – of whether Rick Deckard was him­self a Repli­cant (or at least the com­mon gar­den vari­ety Repli­cant). Not even the peo­ple who made the film can agree on this one: Scott insists that Deckard was not human, while Ford is equal­ly adamant that he is. Vil­leneuve has so far refrained from choos­ing sides, but has promised that the issue will be ​“tak­en care of.”

There’s no hint yet of the role that Robin Wright will come to play, but it’s cer­tain that any scrap of infor­ma­tion that comes out in the days and months to fol­low. Blade Run­ner remains a behe­moth of sci­ence fic­tion cin­e­ma. Loy­al fans will be watch­ing its pro­duc­tion with the inten­si­ty of some­one admin­is­ter­ing the Voight-Kampff test. Prin­ci­pal pho­tog­ra­phy is expect­ed to start in July, with the aim of releas­ing the film in late 2017.