Prime Video has released a new trailer and key art for Blade Runner 2099 at New York Comic Con. The eight-episode limited series premieres on November 25, with all episodes at once. Filming wrapped in late December 2024, so it will reach viewers almost two years after the cameras stopped.
It arrives nearly 45 years after Ridley Scott's original and nine years after Blade Runner 2049, the film it follows.
What the series is
The series is set 50 years after Blade Runner 2049. Los Angeles has been reborn, though not by humans. Cora (Hunter Schafer), a fugitive making a final bid to stop running, takes on one last identity: a Blade Runner. She is forced to partner with Olwen (Michelle Yeoh), a Replicant days from death, to hunt a runaway hiding a truth that could bring down a fragile city.
- Creator and showrunner: Silka Luisa.
- Cast: Michelle Yeoh, Hunter Schafer, Dimitri Abold and Lewis Gribben, with Katelyn Rose Downey, Daniel Rigby, Johnny Harris, Amy Lennox, Sheila Atim, Matthew Needham, Tom Burke and Maurizio Lombardi.
- Director of the first two episodes: Jonathan van Tulleken.
- Executive producers: Ridley Scott, Alcon's Andrew Kosove and Broderick Johnson, Blade Runner 2049 writer Michael Green and Isa Dick Hackett, among others.
- Studios: Amazon MGM Studios and Alcon Television Group, with Scott Free. Wikipedia also lists Sony Pictures Television among the production companies.
Ten episodes became eight, and Belfast became Prague
The road to this trailer was long. According to Wikipedia:
- November 2021: Scott says a pilot and series bible have been written, with initial plans for 10 episodes.
- February 2022: the title Blade Runner 2099 is revealed, with Luisa as showrunner.
- September 2022: Amazon orders it as a miniseries.
- March 2023: Jeremy Podeswa is hired to direct the pilot.
- 2023: production, about to start in Belfast, is postponed by the writers' strike. After the strike, it leaves Northern Ireland entirely.
- February 2024: Podeswa exits over scheduling conflicts; van Tulleken takes the first two episodes.
- May and June 2024: Yeoh and Schafer are cast; production moves to Prague, with filming at Barrandov Studios and in Barcelona.
- Late December 2024: filming wraps.
- November 25, 2026: premiere.
The series that Scott described as ten episodes is eight. The head of Northern Ireland's screen fund said the production's departure left a gap in the region's schedule.
"Sunshine noir"
Luisa has described the look as "sunshine noir", rather than the rainy, dark neon that defined Scott's 1982 film. The series moves the story half a century past 2049, to a Los Angeles that, in its own logline, has been rebuilt by something other than humanity.
A franchise with a difficult box office history
Deadline calls Blade Runner "the Ridley Scott franchise". Its source is older than Scott's film: the characters come from Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and the series credits that book.
At the box office, the last film fell short of its reputation. Blade Runner 2049, directed by Denis Villeneuve with Harrison Ford returning as Rick Deckard alongside Ryan Gosling, made $259.7 million worldwide on a $185 million production budget, according to The Numbers: 1.4 times its cost. It took $92.1 million in North America.
This time the story goes to a subscription service, where a release is not measured by opening weekend.
Who made it
- Writers' room: Luisa brought in writers from Watchmen (2019) and Star Wars: The Acolyte, and consulted Michael Green on the noir mystery at the heart of the pitch.
- Directors: Jonathan van Tulleken, Ariel Kleiman, Marcela Said and Karena Evans.
- Cinematographers: Rob Hardy, Ula Pontikos, Vanja Černjul and Damián García.
- Music: Leopold Ross.
The New York Comic Con panel brought Luisa, Yeoh and Schafer on stage with Dimitri Abold, Lewis Gribben and Matthew Needham, and executive producers Andrew Kosove and Broderick Johnson. Wikipedia lists Needham in a recurring guest role; the panel put him alongside the series regulars.
What is still unknown
- The budget of the series.
- Whether any earlier characters return. Nothing in the announcements says so.
- Whether "limited" stays limited. No second season has been mentioned.
Ridley Scott announced a ten-episode Blade Runner series in 2021. Five years, one writers' strike and one change of country later, eight episodes arrive on November 25, all at once.