Harrison Ford Not in Talks for Blade Runner Sequel

Despite abundant online rumours suggesting that Harrison Ford, star of Ridley Scott’s 1982 sci-fi masterpiece Blade Runner, has been in talks regarding his involvement in a possible sequel, production company Alcon Entertainment have denied this to be true.

Speaking to Deadline, co-CEO of Alcon Andrew Kosove stated:

‘It is absolutely patently false that there has been any discussion about Harrison Ford being in Blade Runner. To be clear, what we are trying to do with Ridley now is go through the painstaking process of trying to break the back of the story, figure out the direction we’re going to take the movie and find a writer to work on it. The casting of the movie could not be further from our minds at this moment.’

Gossip began circulating about a possible follow-up for the neo-noir robot movie over a year ago; it seems that the project has been given a definite go ahead and will probably come to fruition in 2014. Because the project is still in the very early stages of development, there are few clues as to whether the film will actually be a sequel, or simply set in the same time frame / universe of the first film (which was based on a 1968 novel by Philip K. Dick titled Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?). However, talking to Speakeasy last year, Scott did suggest that the new film was most likely to be a sequel.

As confirmed by Kosove, there is no information available concerning who will be cast in the film. Although Ford’s current involvement in the project has been denied, since there have been no casting talks at all as of yet, there is nothing to say that he will not become involved in the future, reprising his role as robot-hunter Deckard. There has even been some speculation concern

ing the casting of Sean Young, who played femme-fatale replicant Rachael in the 1982 film, and who has recently said that she would like to move back into acting after a stint in rehab for alcohol abuse. Young’s involvement in the sequel would throw up a lot of conjecture about plot points, including the alleged four year life span of the replicants, her romance with Deckard and even Deckard’s possible replicant status, which has been a hot topic with film fans and academics alike over the last thirty years.

Many fans of the original film, who were appalled at last year’s news that a follow up was even being considered, will be breathing a sigh of relief that Ford has not as yet signed his name to the sequel. However, they will be glad that, if there has to be a sequel, it will be in the hands of original director Ridley Scott (who has been busy recently following up his direction of classic sci-fi Alien with new franchise addition Prometheus). Scott, although he has attracted criticism in recent years for a few ill-conceived flops, including Kingdom of Heaven and Robin Hood, has proven himself to be a skilful and imaginative director of science fiction. He has said that the original Blade Runner is the most personal of his films, suggesting that any sequel will be given the utmost care and attention.