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Live-action 'Blade Runner 2099' TV series from Ridley Scott coming to Prime Video
The project hails from Shining Girls showrunner Silka Luisa.
Amazon is most definitely dreaming of electric sheep. Per Deadline, the company has partnered up with Ridley Scott for Blade Runner 2099, a television series that will serve as a direct sequel to Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049 (itself a sequel to the 1982 classic helmed by Scott). Silka Luisa, current showrunner and executive producer on Starz's Shining Girls, will write and executive produce the show, which marks a co-production between Amazon Studios, Scott Free Productions, and Alcon Entertainment.
Currently amassing its writers' room, the project is said to be a top priority for Amazon, which is allegedly fast-tracking scripts and already considering potential start dates for the production. Scott, who recently returned to the world of television for HBO's Raised By Wolves, could end up directing an unspecified amount of episodes. The filmmaker actually teased the small screen endeavor at the end of last year, stating: "We're already presenting Blade Runner as a TV show. It'll probably be the first 10 hours."
Plot details are locked away deep in the vaults of the Tyrell Corporation, but if 2099 does end up moving forward, it will be the first live-action television series set in the neo-noir world of Blade Runner.
Based on the 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick, the original film centered around Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a special kind of detective known as a blade runner who hunts down rogue androids known as replicants. The film opened the same weekend as John Carpenter's The Thing and while both movies bombed that summer (E.T. came out a few weeks before), both have come to be reevaluated as some of the greatest science fiction movies ever to grace the big screen.
It took almost 40 years for a sequel to be made, but it was well worth the wait. Blade Runner 2049 shifts the emphasis over to K (Ryan Gosling), an android blade runner on the winding trail of a child miraculously born to a human father and replicant mother. Ford reprised the role of Deckard in the follow-up, which was critically acclaimed, but failed to drum up big box office numbers. Nevertheless, it received five Oscar nominations, winning two for Best Cinematography and Best Visual Effects. Blade Runner 2049 was an excellent Dune audition for Villeneuve, who proved his talent for turning a semi-obscure sci-fi property into a stunning piece of mainstream cinema.
Blade Runner: Black Lotus — an anime-series based on the property from Adult Swim and Crunchyroll — aired its final episode this month. In addition, Titan Comics publishes a number of books inspired by the films.
