http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/may/18/ridley-scott-reunited-blade-runner-writer
Amazing
Quote:
Ridley Scott's return to Blade Runner will be a sequel featuring a female protagonist, the veteran British director has confirmed. Alcon Entertainment, which owns the follow-up rights to the 1982 science fiction classic, announced in August that it had pulled off a coup by engaging the veteran British director to revisit one of his greatest triumphs, but it was unclear at the time what form the new film would take.
That uncertainty has now been dispelled, however, after Scott enlarged on an Alcon statement revealing that "the new story will take place some years after the first film concluded". "I started my first meetings on the Blade Runner sequel last week," the director told aceshowbiz.com. "We have a very good take on it. And we'll definitely be featuring a female protagonist."
As if securing Scott's services weren't coup enough, Alcon has also revealed it is in talks with original Blade Runner writer Hampton Fancher to write the screenplay.
"The three-time Oscar-nominated Scott and his Blade Runner collaborator Fancher originally conceived of their 1982 classic as the first in a series of films incorporating the themes and characters featured in Philip K Dick's groundbreaking novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, from which Blade Runner was adapted," said Alcon in a statement. "Circumstances, however, took Scott into other directions and the project never advanced."
Based on Dick's 1968 novel, Blade Runner was not a box office or critical hit in 1982, but has gathered plaudits over the years and been cited as the greatest science fiction film of all time by a number of publications. Negative initial critical opinion of the movie was largely reversed with the arrival in 1992 of a director's cut, in which Scott excised the original's studio-commissioned Harrison Ford voiceover as well as a pegged-on "happy ending", which the film-maker is said to have hated.
Set in an overpopulated future Los Angeles that never sees the sunlight, the film is about a "blade runner", Rick Deckard (Ford), who is tasked with taking out a gang of "replicants" (android outlaws) who have escaped to Earth from an off-world colony. The film-maker left the audience to decide whether Deckard himself is in fact also a replicant.
"It is a perfect opportunity to reunite Ridley with Hampton on this new project," added Alcon. "One in fact inspired by their own personal collaboration, a classic of cinema if there ever was one."
Fancher, 73, has not been a prolific screenwriter since Blade Runner, producing screenplays for only two films, 1989's The Mighty Quinn and thriller The Minus Man a decade later, the latter of which he also directed. The appointment is all the more intriguing because Scott fell out with Fancher on the first film over his initial draft, which is said to have taken more of an environmentally-themed approach to the story. Fancher was replaced by David Peoples, though he later returned for rewrites.
No release date has been set for the new project, but it is likely to be some time before it arrives in cinemas. Scott is currently promoting his first science fiction film in more than three decades, Prometheus, which revisits the universe he created for 1979's Alien. He is also due to shoot Cormac McCarthy's screenplay for The Counselor, and has said he is open to the possibility of Prometheus sequels. An adaptation of the board game Monopoly is also on the cards.
- Blade Runner
- Production year: 1982
- Country: USA
- Cert (UK): 15
- Runtime: 117 mins
- Directors: Ridley Scott
- Cast: Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young
That uncertainty has now been dispelled, however, after Scott enlarged on an Alcon statement revealing that "the new story will take place some years after the first film concluded". "I started my first meetings on the Blade Runner sequel last week," the director told aceshowbiz.com. "We have a very good take on it. And we'll definitely be featuring a female protagonist."
As if securing Scott's services weren't coup enough, Alcon has also revealed it is in talks with original Blade Runner writer Hampton Fancher to write the screenplay.
"The three-time Oscar-nominated Scott and his Blade Runner collaborator Fancher originally conceived of their 1982 classic as the first in a series of films incorporating the themes and characters featured in Philip K Dick's groundbreaking novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, from which Blade Runner was adapted," said Alcon in a statement. "Circumstances, however, took Scott into other directions and the project never advanced."
Based on Dick's 1968 novel, Blade Runner was not a box office or critical hit in 1982, but has gathered plaudits over the years and been cited as the greatest science fiction film of all time by a number of publications. Negative initial critical opinion of the movie was largely reversed with the arrival in 1992 of a director's cut, in which Scott excised the original's studio-commissioned Harrison Ford voiceover as well as a pegged-on "happy ending", which the film-maker is said to have hated.
Set in an overpopulated future Los Angeles that never sees the sunlight, the film is about a "blade runner", Rick Deckard (Ford), who is tasked with taking out a gang of "replicants" (android outlaws) who have escaped to Earth from an off-world colony. The film-maker left the audience to decide whether Deckard himself is in fact also a replicant.
"It is a perfect opportunity to reunite Ridley with Hampton on this new project," added Alcon. "One in fact inspired by their own personal collaboration, a classic of cinema if there ever was one."
Fancher, 73, has not been a prolific screenwriter since Blade Runner, producing screenplays for only two films, 1989's The Mighty Quinn and thriller The Minus Man a decade later, the latter of which he also directed. The appointment is all the more intriguing because Scott fell out with Fancher on the first film over his initial draft, which is said to have taken more of an environmentally-themed approach to the story. Fancher was replaced by David Peoples, though he later returned for rewrites.
No release date has been set for the new project, but it is likely to be some time before it arrives in cinemas. Scott is currently promoting his first science fiction film in more than three decades, Prometheus, which revisits the universe he created for 1979's Alien. He is also due to shoot Cormac McCarthy's screenplay for The Counselor, and has said he is open to the possibility of Prometheus sequels. An adaptation of the board game Monopoly is also on the cards.
Amazing
![[http://instntrply.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/WadeSuperman.gif]](http://instntrply.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/WadeSuperman.gif "http://instntrply.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/WadeSuperman.gif")
