Photo: Alcon Entertainment
Blade Runner’s next act will apparently be a live-action TV series from Amazon, with original director Ridley Scott set to return as an executive producer on the project, Blade Runner 2099, Variety reports.
Blade Runner 2099 will pick up 50 years in the future from the Denis Villeneuve-helmed sequel Blade Runner 2049 from 2017 and will see Silka Luisa (the showrunner on Apple TV Plus’ Shining Girls) writing and executive producing the series. Deadline adds that Scott may also direct the show himself, too.
Scott had previously teased the project in a BBC interview back in November — the first public mention of the series — mentioning that the live-action show was being developed as a 10-episode series to start, with a pilot and a show bible already written. Blader Runner: 2099 won’t be the first spin-off show for the iconic sci-fi franchise, either; Adult Swim debuted an anime series, Blade Runner: Black Lotus, late last year that further expanded the Blade Runner universe.
The original Blade Runner was released in 1982 and has since risen to prominence as one of the most beloved science fiction movies ever made (along with one of the most controversial, given the plethora of different cuts whose relative merits have been fodder for internet arguments for decades). The 35-years-in-the-making sequel, Blade Runner 2049, was released in 2017 to critical — if not commercial — success.
That Amazon is the reported home of the live-action Blade Runner show speaks to the mega-corporation’s streaming ambitions as it continues to try and build out its library of must-see content. Amazon Studios has invested heavily in genre television in recent years, with the company picking up The Expanse after its original cancellation, along with big-budget projects like The Wheel of Time and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (the latter of which, with a reported budget of $465 million looks to be the single most expensive TV series ever made).