Alcon Entertainment’s recently announced plans to replicate the 1982 sci-fi classic Blade Runner now has the willing participation of Ridley Scott, who has signed on to direct and produce another installment in what Alcon would like to make a Blade Runner line of basic pleasure models. Given that Alcon promised the world to never attempt to remake the original, it’s unclear whether Scott plans to do a sequel or prequel to his early triumph. When Alcon first bought up the property, co-founders Broderick Johnson and Andrew Kosove were definitely more interested in the latter, though they acknowledged that setting any story before the original film’s 2019 timeline would hew uncomfortably close to our own timeline, requiring an even greater suspension of disbelief as, so far, Los Angeles remains only mildly dystopian.
Still, they more or less admitted that they could just wave that away with the explanation that Blade Runner takes place in an “alternate universe,” so it’s quite possible that a prequel is exactly what Scott has in mind—especially considering he just did something similar with Alien. Of course, that film eventually morphed into the only tangentially related Prometheus, so there’s also the possibility that something similar could happen here. Also reassuring to those who would rather Blade Runner just be left alone: We’re talking about serial committer Ridley Scott here, whose name being attached to a project is almost a seal of guarantee that it won’t ever actually get done.