Sci-fi fans will be salivating at the news that Ridley Scott has finished writing the long-awaited sequel to his 1982 classic Blade Runner.
The follow-up has been co-written with Hampton Francher, who also helped Scott adapt Phillip K Dick’s short story Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? into the original movie, which starred Harrison Ford as Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter who tracks down and terminates replicants – robots that are almost impossible to tell apart from humans.
Scott told Entertainment Weekly: “It’s written and it’s damn good. Of course it involves Harrison, who is a survivor after all these years, despite the accident. So yes, that will happen.”
Whether the “accident” is a cryptic reference to events affecting Deckard since the previous movie, or a joke about the mishap on the set of Star Wars Episode VII in which Ford injured his ankle causing a shooting delay was not clear.
Ford has yet to comment on the likelihood of his involvement in the film, while producers Alcon have said only that “we are hopeful that Harrison will be part of our project”.
Scott doesn’t provide a specific timetable for the movie, though he hopes to make it after his next film, The Martian, which is due to start shooting in November.
The folks at twofour54 Abu Dhabi might want to prick their ears up here, as Scott has stated that he will “probably” shoot the Mars-based scenes at Wadi Rum in Jordan – but it’s not as though Abu Dhabi hasn’t ended up becoming the unexpected scene for alien landscapes ahead of other, more likely locations before now, is it?
cnewbould@thenational.ae