In front of a packed Hall H at Comic-Con in San Diego, Prime Video debuted an upcoming sci-fi series that has been generating big buzz: “Blade Runner 2099,” the latest entry in the franchise.
Details about the anticipated new series have been kept tightly under wraps, with the Comic-Con appearance marking the first time fans were able to learn details about it.
The series’ stars, Michelle Yeoh (“Everything Everywhere All at Once”) and Hunter Schafer (“Euphoria”), were joined by showrunner Silka Luisa and executive producers Andrew Kosove and Broderick Johnson for the panel.
Fifty Years Later
The highlight of the panel was the debut of the first trailer, teasing what fans can expect when the series premieres in the fall.
“Fifty years after the events of ‘Blade Runner 2049’, Los Angeles has been reborn, just not by humanity,” reads the logline.
“Cora (Schafer), a fugitive in a final bid to stop running, takes on one last identity: a Blade Runner. Forced to partner with Olwen (Yeoh), a Replicant days from dying, she hunts down a runaway hiding a truth that could collapse their fragile city,” the logline concludes.
The Cast Assembled
Amazon MGM StudiosIn addition to Schafer and Yeoh, other series regulars on hand for the panel were Dimitri Abold (“The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes”) and Lewis Gribben (“Somewhere Boy”).
Also appearring were recurring guest stars Katelyn Rose Downey (“The Nun II”), Daniel Rigby (“Renegade Nell”), Johnny Harris (“A Gentleman in Moscow”), Amy Lennox (“Only Child”), Sheila Atim (“The Woman King”), Matthew Needham (“House of the Dragon”), Tom Burke (“Furiosa”) and Maurizio Lombardi (“Ripley”).
Silka Luisa serves as showrunner and executive producer along with Ridley Scott, Alcon Entertainment co-founders Andrew Kosove and Broderick Johnson, Alcon’s President of Television Ben Roberts, David W. Zucker and Clayton Krueger from Scott Free Productions, Tom Spezialy, Richard Sharkey, Michael Green, Cynthia Yorkin, Frank Giustra, and Isa Dick Hackett. Jonathan van Tulleken (“Shogun”) is an executive producer and directed the first two episodes.
Ridley Scott’s 1982 Feature Started It All
The “Blade Runner” saga began with science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, and the 1968 publication of his dystopian novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”
Set in post-apocalyptic San Francisco, the book was adapted into the 1982 feature “Blade Runner” by director Ridley Scott. In the film, Harrison Ford starred as Rick Deckard, whose job as a Blade Runner entails tracking down android replicants that have escaped and gone rogue.
Ford returned to the role in 2017’s “Blade Runner 2049,” from director Denis Villeneuve (who would go on to direct “Dune” and its sequels).
In the long-awaited sequel, Ryan Gosling played K, a young Blade Runner tasked with hunting down Deckard, who’d been missing for the past 30 years.
“Blade Runner 2099” will bring the story a half-century into the future. While it’s unlikely that either Ford or Gosling will appear in the series to reprise their roles — hey, it’s sci-fi, and stranger things have happened.
When Will ‘Blade Runner 2099’ Debut?
All eight episodes of “Blade Runner 2099” will premiere on November 25.
