Amazon Greenlights ‘Blade Runner 2099’ TV Series

Amazon Prime Video is breathing new life into Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner franchise.

Nearly a year after Scott first revealed plans for the show, Amazon formally ordered a follow-up to 2017’s Blade Runner 2049, itself a sequel to the original Blade Runner.

Details are scant, but the title, Blade Runner 2099, hints at a story set 50 years after Denis Villeneuve’s Harrison Ford-Ryan Gosling vehicle. As reported by Variety(Opens in a new window), Silka Luisa serves as showrunner and executive producer, with Scott also serving as executive producer.

“We are delighted to continue our working relationship with our friends at Amazon,” Andrew Kosove and Broderick Johnson, co-founders of Alcon Entertainment, said in a statement published by Variety. The studio acquired all Blade Runner film, TV, and ancillary franchise rights in 2011, and went on to produce Blade Runner 2049 (featuring Ford, Gosling, Jared Leto, Ana de Armas, Robin Wright, and Dave Bautista) and anime series Blade Runner: Black Lotus.

Johnson and Kosove will also executive produce the upcoming show.

Adapted from Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the 1982 Blade Runner is set in 2019 dystopian Los Angeles, where synthetic humans (or replicants) are bio-engineered to work on space colonies. When a fugitive group of replicants (led by Rutger Hauer’s Roy Batty) escapes back to Earth, ex-cop Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) reluctantly agrees to hunt them down. Sean Young, Edward James Olmos, and Daryl Hannah also star.

Following its rise to cult status, the film got a director’s cut release in 1992, followed by The Final Cut in 2007. Blade Runner, meanwhile, has spawned a series of novels, comics, and short films.

“The original Blade Runner, directed by Ridley Scott, is considered one of the greatest and most influential science-fiction movies of all time, and we’re excited to introduce Blade Runner 2099 to our global Prime Video customers,” says Vernon Sanders, head of global television for Amazon Studios. “We are honored to be able to present this continuation of the Blade Runner franchise, and are confident that […] Blade Runner 2099 will uphold the intellect, themes, and spirit of its film predecessors.”

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