July 13th may be Harrison Ford’s birthday, but it seems his fans are getting the best gift of all, after new names were added to the cast list of the Blade Runner sequel that’s been in talks for ages.
That’s right folks, while we knew Ford was on board to reprise his role as the original blade runner Rick Deckard, we received some new names to add to the list. David Dastmalchian (Kurt from Ant-Man) and Hiam Abbass (The Visitor) have signed-on to the sequel, which as this point, now includes Ryan Gosling, Robin Wright, Dave Baustista, and Mackenzie Davis.
Other stars include Ana de Armas (who is set to star in the upcoming Hands of Stone late next month), Barkhad Abdi (“I’m the captain now” from Captain Phillips), Carla Juri (Wetlands), and Sylvia Hoeks (The Best Offer).
Denis Villeneuve is directing the sequel, and if we can guess anything from his mindbogglingly interactive shots in Enemy, Prisoners, and most recently, Sicario, we can tell he’s going to have some fun with usual intense visuals and getting the suspense of the story down to a tee– I need to know, is she or isn’t she a replicant?!
It also seems as if the new sequel will try to stay mostly true to the original, with Hampton Fancher working on the sequel’s screenplay; Fancher, of course, adapting the screenplay from Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? for the original 1982 film. Also helping with the screenplay is Michael Green, who has had some experience writing about science fiction topics since writing the screenplays behind Green Lantern, an upcoming Wolverine spin-off, and several episodes of Smallville and Heroes. And we can all hope that the original director of the film, Ridley Scott, has something to add as a contributing writer for the sequel.
Alcon Entertainment owns the franchise rights in addition to producing the film, which is set to be released on October 6, 2017. The film is situated several decades after the original, and if the original was set in 2019 LA, we can look forward to seeing sights of an even more dystopian world as far as the 2040s or more. Guess all we have to do now is wait.
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