Live-action series ‘Blade Runner 2099’ is now in works at Amazon Studios

Mega corporation Amazon is planning to bring a Blade Runner sequel to the small screen, effectively expanding the universe.

The dystopian world brought to life by Ridley Scott in 1982’s Blade Runner, full of mega-corporations and replicant slaves of said corporations, is now being brought to life once more by real-life mega-corp Amazon Studios. Ridley Scott, director of the original film, will be in the role of executive producer for the sequel to the dystopian sci-fi thriller. Blade Runner 2099 will also act as a sequel to Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049, setting up a little universe within what has now become a franchise.

Silka Luisa, who is the showrunner for Starz’s upcoming drama series Shining Girls, headlined by Elisabeth Moss, will be writing and exec-producing on the series. The sequel will come from Scott Free Productions alongside Alcon Entertainment and Amazon Studios. The project will be the first live-action series in the franchise’s history and is in a priority development program at Amazon Studios, meaning scripts are being fast-tracked and potential release dates are already being looked at.

The studio is currently looking to staff writers to join a room. It is also rumoured that Scott may return to direct the series if it moves forward.

1982’s dystopian thriller, an adaptation of the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, is set in a hyper-grimy and distant(which was 2019 at the time) LA, where capitalism had run away to the extent of inequalities beyond belief. The bio-engineered replicants, engineered by the oppressive Tyrell Corporation,  were sent away to colonize space as slaves of humanity’s richest. When a group of replicants escaped back to Earth a cop, played by Harrison Ford, was ordered to hunt them down and eliminate them.

Blade Runner 2099 was taken to test its metal on the streaming market last fall. Scott teased the project in November, telling the BBC that a pilot and a bible had been written without going into further details, at that point, talks with Amazon Studios were already underway. The Blade Runner series is the second high-profile feature film, directed by Scott, being adapted for tv; Noah Hawley is behind a reinvention of Alien for FX that is set to begin production in 2023.

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