Bladerunner 2

Not just no, but hell no.

This weekend I received an e-mail from /Film reader Tanner C. informing me that one of the screenwriters of Eagle Eye was working on a screenplay for Blade Runner 2. I spent the weekend trying to get confirmation, and thanks to my friend Frosty at Collider who was able to get in touch with a second person who was also at the event, I was able to confirm that the following was actually said. But before you throw a hissy fit. let me fill you in on all the details and assure you that nothing is being developed by the studio itself, or with the studio’s involvement.

Although I disagree with the article's author -- I don't believe Bladerunner is perfect -- it remains one of my top three all-time favorite movies in any genre. For all its faults, it remains a visionary work no matter the version, and one of the movies that had the biggest impact on me. The very thought that someone would even attempt a sequel makes me want to bellow with rage.

The Stanley Kubrick Collection

Tomorrow Warner Bros. will release a box set which includes the late director's seminal science fiction and horror movies.



Great, as if I didn't have enough trouble salivating over the Ultimate Bladerunner coming out later this year...

A 21st-Century Story in a 1940s Style

To whet our appetites for the Ultimate Bladerunner DVD set, Wired has posted this interview with Ridley Scott on their website.

Wired: You started working on this movie more than 25 years ago. How does it feel to be talking about it again?

Scott: It never went away, so I'm used to it. It kept reemerging, and that's when I realized that it had really unusual staying power. It's all very well to say, "Well, I knew it had." But I didn't, really, at the time. I knew I'd done a pretty interesting movie, but it was so unusual that the majority of people were taken aback. They simply didn't get it. Or, I think, better to say that they were enormously distracted by the environment.

Wired: What do you mean by that?

Scott: I was touching on possibilities like replication. It's now quite commonplace, but 25 years ago they were barely discussing it in the corridors of power. Now, the film is not really about that at all, it's simply leveraging that possibility into one of those detective film-noir kinds of stories. People were familiar with that kind of
character, but not with the world I was cooking up. I wanted to call it San Angeles, and somebody said, "I don't get it." I said, "You know, San Francisco and Los Angeles." It's bizarre: People only think about what's under their noses until it comes and kicks them in the ass.

Wired: How did you decide to tell a 21st-century story in a 1940s style?

Scott: Well, people want a comfortable preconception about what they're seeing. It's a bit like 20 years of Westerns and, now, 45 years of cop movies. People are comfortable with the roles. Even though every nook and cranny has been explored, they'll still sit through endless variations on cops and bad guys, right? In this instance, I was doing a cop and a different bad guy. And to justify the creation of the bad guy, i.e., replication, it had to be in the future.

The rest of the interview is worth your time, as well.

And is it me, or does Ridley Scott look like Philip K. Dick in the accompanying picture?

Go read.