Harrison Ford may be returning as Deckard in Ridley Scott’s follow-up to Blade Runner, thirty years after the original.
Scott committed to the revival, unspecified as a prequel or sequel, in August 2011, while shooting was underway on his other revisit, the Alien prequel Prometheus scheduled for this summer. At the time, producers told the story of how Scott became involved in Blade Runner 2 (money) and said things like “new,” “fresh,” “total reinvention” and “stand as separately as possible” to the LA Times. Apparently a few details have changed, like how Prometheus started as a straight prequel and became an almost prequel with the same “Alien DNA.”
Twitch reports Ford is in early talks to join the new Blade Runner. This indicates Scott is thinking of continuing his own universe, not rebooting it or diverging from the first entirely.
Update: The producers deny Ford is in talks (Deadline).
The 1982 original, which starred Harrison Ford, centered on Los Angeles in 2019 after the ban of genetically-engineered organic robots called replicants. Those robots who defy the ban and return to Earth are tracked and killed by bounty hunters called “blade runners.” Ford played Rick Deckard, a veteran blade runner tasked with uncovering a group of hiding replicants but falls for one instead. Ridley Scott’s bleak film, based on the novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by Philip K. Dick (along with George Miller’s Mad Max trilogy), became the seminal inspirations for a flood of bleak dystopian futures in sci-fi.
Scott is committed to several projects, including Cormac McCarthy’s The Counselor, so it’s unclear if this sequel will be his next film. However, if casting is truly being considered, his Blade Runner follow-up could very well be next, perhaps for a possible 2014 release.
Update: Scott clarifies the project is only in the conceptual phase to USA Today, meaning a 2014 release is unlikely. He doesn’t rule out Ford or the return of Rick Deckard.
Meanwhile, Ford has been embracing his genre fans a bit. He starred in Cowboys & Aliens recently. He is set to appear in Ender’s Game, an adaptation of a beloved sci-fi book. Plus the starring role in an upcoming Wyatt Earp western titled Black Hats.
