After Denis Villeneuve’s foray into the neo-noir future of Blade Runner seemingly petered out at the box office, the future of the franchise seemed dire. But now, the show must go on — and Blade Runner has found a new home, a new format, and a familiar talent behind the scenes.
Deadline reports that Amazon has tapped original Blade Runner director Ridley Scott to executive produce a brand new live-action streaming series for Prime Video. Titled Blade Runner 2099, the series is set 50 years after the events of Denis Villeneuve’s 2017 film. Silka Luisa, currently showrunning Shining Girls for Starz, will co-produce and lead writing for the series, and Amazon Studios is currently fast-tracking development of the series according to the trade, looking to establish a writers room to join Luisa soon. Deadline further notes that, while not guaranteed, Scott could return to direct Blade Runner 2099 should Amazon move ahead with the series.
2049, itself set 30 years after Scott’s original adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s seminal novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, followed Ryan Gosling as K, a young Blade Runner tasked with hunting down the rogue android replicants, crossing paths with the first movie’s protagonist Deckard, played by Harrison Ford. Since its release it’s not the only new Blade Runner project we’ve seen, however: last year Crunchyroll and Adult Swim gave us Blade Runner: Black Lotus, a 3DCG anime series from Shinji Aramaki and Kenji Kamiyama. Set in 2032, it followed Matrix Resurrections’ Jessica Henwick as a replicant named Elle, herself on the run from the shady forces looking to forcibly “retire” her.
We’ll bring you more on Amazon’s plans for Blade Runner 2099 as we learn them.