Hampton Fancher co-wrote the original ‘Blade Runner’ as well as the upcoming ‘Blade Runner 2049‘ but his initial idea for a sequel was pretty different. The idea had been pitched a year after the first movie was created and would have put Harrison Ford‘s Deckard in Russia, but thanks to legal problems it never had a chance to see the light of day. Of course, Ryan Gosling fans are probably thrilled that things turned out the way they did but most of us won’t have much of a say on the matter until the film drops in October.
Honestly, I just hope Ridley Scott didn’t influence it to go the route that the ‘Alien’ franchise has.
At San Diego Comic-Con Hampton Fancher was interviewed and when asked about the sequel he first stated that:
“When we finished the first one, within a year we were talking about a second one. Ridley called, I was in New York and I went out to LA, and we batted stories around. Nothing came of it because of legal problems.”
Legal problems could easily explain why it has been 35 years since we’ve last seen the replicants though I suspect that isn’t the only reason it was held back so long. However, when spitballing ideas all those years ago Fancher shares that he had a completely different idea in mind for a follow up:
“I guess, because I was reading in the newspapers, I thought Deckard had come to bad circumstances–he was nowhere–and he got assigned a Blade Runner job in Moscow, and it was all Russian, and cold, and snow … John le Carré, you know? That’s what I was thinking of. I remember telling Ridley that, “Harrison in Moscow!” Just that’s a good thing, right? And he said ::shrugs:: and nothing came of it.”
I could see Deckard having been shackled with a job somewhere that no one wanted but possibly more in Siberia than Moscow. Still, I’d love to see what their design crew would have done with a futuristic version of Russia designed while the United States was in the middle of a Cold War.
Are you happy that we never got to see this version of Russia and ‘Blade Runner 2’ on the big screen or would it have been as iconic as the first film? Share your thoughts below!
