The planned sequel to Blade Runner is an odd thing. Ridley Scott had only made two sci-fi movies in his life, Alien and Blade Runner, but he finally went back to the Alien universe with Prometheus.
Then there have been a lot of reports about a Blade Runner sequel, but who knows if it will ever come to pass? And the real question is will the fans except a Blade Runner sequel? The original is so beloved, and the fan expectations wouldn’t be as high as a Star Wars or a Batman sequel, but close enough.
Funny enough, there’s been a lot of news lately around Blade Runner, some of it quite bizarre. Joanna Cassidy, who played a replicant named Zhora, talking to Forbes about a scene she was supposed to do with a snake for the film.
Cassidy just shot a short video of the snake dance scene recently, telling Forbes, “I just got to a point where I was thinking the 30th year of Blade Runner was coming up and I just thought, ya know, that dance never got done…and I just thought I think it would be so cool for someone in their 60s to just want to go out and be hip and fun.”
According to Slashfilm, Sean Young also said she met with Alcon, the company that’s planning the Blade Runner sequel, “But I think at that point they just wanted to meet me and I don’t think they have any plans of using any of the original people, although I can’t say for sure…I do think it would be a disappointment to the audience not to have Rachael in it but you know what, folks in Hollywood make mistakes all the time.”
Now screenwriter Scott Z. Burns (The Bourne Ultimatum), has also commented about his involvement in the Blade Runner sequel, telling Collider, “I talked to Ridley about it at one point as a part of a larger conversation about us trying to find something to do together because I have such admiration for him. I’m as huge a fan of that movie as anybody else who would be reading this or watching it, so I said, ‘Let’s not do that unless we have something amazing to do or say…’”
Burns continued, “I think he and I will probably talk again about [it], but again it’s less about that specifically and more about he and I wanting to make a science fiction movie together. So I hope that that happens…” Yet Burns also added, “I’m not particularly attached to it being Blade Runner. I suspect by the time we would come up with something it would be its own thing and not attached to that franchise necessarily…”
So there’s all this weird Blade Runner serendipity going on out there, and it’s not because of the 30th anniversary because that came last summer. So could there be any movement on it? Is it wishful thinking? Are the powers that be testing the waters? All coincidental? Who knows? Would it be a good idea to mess with such a beloved sci-fi classic? Could the Prometheus approach work where it’s still in the same universe? Maybe some day we’ll get to find out.
