New ‘BLADE RUNNER’ Officially A Sequel, Original Screenwriter Hampton Fancher On Board.

Here’s some more news on the Blade Runner  front, and it is turning up aces. At least for me. The flick is certainly  going to be a sequel, and the original screenwriter is back on board. It’s a Blade Runner-heavy news cycle, but in my world only the curmudgeonly bitch about such a wonder.

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We pretty much  covered this  in the last couple of days, but it’s possible we buried the lead a little, plus a press release is out, so it’s now official: with “Prometheus” nearly upon us,  Ridley Scott  has started to seriously work towards his other sci-fi follow up, the continuation of “Blade Runner” that was originally announced last summer. A couple of details have been confirmed via a press release from  Alcon Entertainment, among them that Scott is going right back to the well when it comes to nailing down the story for his new replicant-themed picture.

Namely,  Hampton Fancher,  who wrote the original draft of “Blade Runner,” has been hired to develop the story for the project. This has been in the works for a while;  yesterday  we reported that Scott had met with the screenwriter (who was also behind underrated  Owen Wilson  film “The Minus Man”), and said he still “talked the talk,” and now his expertise has officially been enlisted on the film, although the release is careful to say that he’s not writing the screenplay: it seems like he’ll knock out ideas with Scott, before another writer does the nuts and bolts of the project.

Also  re-confirmed: the film will be a sequel, rather than a prequel, or a “Prometheus”-style side story, to the original film, taking place ‘some years’ after the sneaking-up-ever-closer 2019 setting of the original. That doesn’t mean that you should count on an appearance from Deckard (Harrison Ford) — as  we reported earlier,  Scott says that the new film will have a female protagonist. Anyway, we’re excited to see the film moving forward, and dearly hope that Fancher and the director come up with some ideas that honor the original, while doing something new with the material.

Ridley Scott! Doin’ work!