The ‘Blade Runner’ Sequel: Harrison Ford Is In & Ridley Scott Says Script Is ‘Damn Good’

There will be a sequel to Blade Runner; Harrison Ford will be in it, and director Ridley Scott says the film’s script is “damn good.”

Blade Runner changed the face of science fiction films. Along with Ridley Scott’s other masterwork Alien, George Lucas’s Star Wars and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, these films carried science fiction out of the hokey ‘B’ Movie status they’d maintained since the 1950’s. Blade Runner especially proved that science fiction films could portray a more gritty, “lived in” universe than the sleek and shiny sci-fi films from the fifties and sixties.

Based on legendary author, Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Blade Runner told the story of the burned-out Rick Deckard, a Blade Runner by trade, who is tasked with tracking down and destroying Replicants – or androids. Harrison Ford played Deckard, and was joined in what would become an all-star cast including Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Daryl Hannah, Edward James Olmos, Emmet Walsh and Joe Turkel.

Shot more as a film noir detective story reminiscent of Humphrey Bogart’s Sam Spade character-driven movies than a science fiction title, Blade Runner didn’t shy away from such difficult themes as genetic engineering and eugenics. It comes to light that one character in the movie, who think it’s human, is actually a Replicant constructed with childhood memories so it can’t distinguish what’s real and what’s not. (This is a theme that would pervade much of Philip K. Dick’s work. The troubled author often posed questions about reality and whether or not we can understand what is really happening in the universe.) We are also posed with an unanswered question throughout Blade Runner as to whether or not Deckard is actually a Replicant.

The script for the original Blade Runner was written by Hampton Francher and David Peoples. According to Xpose, Francher has returned to co-pen the script for the sequel along with Michael Green. That script is now finished, and Ridley Scott says it’s “damn good.”

Harrison Ford is officially on board for the sequel according to Den of Geek, though it’s not clear if he’ll reprise his role of Rick Deckard from the original Blade Runner, or be playing a different character. If he does play Deckard, that may clear up the debate that’s raged since the movie was originally released in 1982 as to whether or not Deckard was a Replicant; Replicant’s have a short life span, and they don’t age – so if the 72 year-old actor does reprise his role, we’ll know Deckard was human after all.

The next obvious question to be answered is, does Blade Runner need a sequel? The last sequel Ridley Scott did was Prometheus, which connects to his Alien film and was a movie that was met with more than mixed reviews.

Are you worried about a Blade Runner sequel tarnishing the legend of the original?

image via Biomechanical Rhetoric and The Movie Guys