If you follow a site that genuinely thinks that Star Trek and other science fiction productions are made up of only male fans, or that men only watch productions that feature men, then you have a real problem.The "Blade Runner 2099" showrunner was a producer on the Paramount+ Halo TV show.
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In real life, swords are fragile weapons that were used more as status symbols for the elite than actual combat weapons. In the days when samurai actually battled each other, they preferred using bows and arrows so they could attack from a safe distance. (Well, safe unless hit by the other guys' arrows, I guess.) The mystique of the samurai sword was more something that evolved in later generations when samurai were largely deskbound administrators reflecting on past glories. And of course swordplay became popular in theater and eventually film because it's easier and safer for two actors to stage an exciting swordfight than to fire arrows at each other.
So here we are nearly halfway through 2026 and the only news we have about 2099 is that it's been delayed until 2027. Filming wrapped in December 2024. That's a lot of post-production. We also know that Alcon Entertainment has a company working on an official... something... called Blade Runner: The Immersive Experience, also expected next year. And Titan's comics continue, with the second series of Blade Runner: Tokyo Nexus coming out now.
It's hard not to think of all the delays with Blade Runner: 2099 being a danger sign, but at least the show won't get lost in the hype around a couple of other big cyberpunk productions.
Ghost in the Shell, based on Masamune Shirow's original manga (i.e., not on Mamoru Oshii's 1995 film adaptation or any of the other versions of GitS), is due in July of this year.
Apple TV reportedly plans to release Neuromancer, based on William Gibson's classic novel, later this year.
A second season of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, based on the video game Cyberpunk: 2077 video game and the original Cyberpunk table top RPG, was announced last year but probably won't be out any time soon.
A lot less cyberpunk but what the heck: the first new Patlabor anime in a long time, Patlabor EZY, is coming this year, too. (Mamoru Oshii did the first two Patlabor movies before doing GitS.)
It's hard not to think of all the delays with Blade Runner: 2099 being a danger sign, but at least the show won't get lost in the hype around a couple of other big cyberpunk productions.
Ghost in the Shell, based on Masamune Shirow's original manga (i.e., not on Mamoru Oshii's 1995 film adaptation or any of the other versions of GitS), is due in July of this year.
Apple TV reportedly plans to release Neuromancer, based on William Gibson's classic novel, later this year.
A second season of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, based on the video game Cyberpunk: 2077 video game and the original Cyberpunk table top RPG, was announced last year but probably won't be out any time soon.
A lot less cyberpunk but what the heck: the first new Patlabor anime in a long time, Patlabor EZY, is coming this year, too. (Mamoru Oshii did the first two Patlabor movies before doing GitS.)
Huh. Somehow this completely passed me by. Something to look forward to.
As for Blade Runner 2099, I'll admit I kind of started thinking of it as vaporware a while back. It just seemed to go away somehow. I don't have hugely high expectations for it, but I do hope it's good.
Yeah, this one's going to be different. Stand Alone Complex, Arise, and SAC_2045 may not all fit into the same continuity but they tend to be more or less consistent with the tone of the 1995 movie. This looks like it'll restore some of the humour of the manga, as well as the look.
Damn, I completely forgot about 2099 but I agree that the continued delays isn't a good sign.
No news looking forward, but looking back, I recently came across another draft of the original movie. So that's four drafts floating around the Internet that I know of:
Dangerous Days by Hampton Fancher, January 7, 1980
Blade Runner by Hampton Fancher, July 24, 1980
Blade Runner working draft, December 22, 1980
Blade Runner by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, February 2, 1981
My workplace is pushing people to use AI, which isn't a good fit for my job, but I need to be able to understand what it can do. So off I went to Copilot, which is what we're supposed to use, to get it to compare the four drafts. It did, eventually, after a captcha finally accepted after a few tries my attempt to prove that I'm human. Anyway, Copilot did generate some documents looking at the changes from one draft to the next. I'll probably read the screenplays and then see whether Copilot hallucinated anything.
I wonder if any early drafts of BR2049 are available anywhere. Everyone seems to have the final shooting script.
Dangerous Days by Hampton Fancher, January 7, 1980
Blade Runner by Hampton Fancher, July 24, 1980
Blade Runner working draft, December 22, 1980
Blade Runner by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, February 2, 1981
My workplace is pushing people to use AI, which isn't a good fit for my job, but I need to be able to understand what it can do. So off I went to Copilot, which is what we're supposed to use, to get it to compare the four drafts. It did, eventually, after a captcha finally accepted after a few tries my attempt to prove that I'm human. Anyway, Copilot did generate some documents looking at the changes from one draft to the next. I'll probably read the screenplays and then see whether Copilot hallucinated anything.
I wonder if any early drafts of BR2049 are available anywhere. Everyone seems to have the final shooting script.
Hey, maybe then you can finally answer that question about electric sheep!
In other Blade Runner news... Titan Comics has made almost all of their Blade Runner comics available for a very low price through Humble Bundle. Totally legit, and you get PDF and CBZ downloads without DRM. Everything that's been gathered into a graphic novel collection is there in that form, rather than individual issues, plus the special Artist's Edition of the first volume; for the two series (four issues each) that haven't been collected yet, you get the first issue.
So that's twelve issues of Blade Runner 2019 in three volumes, twelve issues of 2029 in three volumes, twelve issues of 2039 in three volumes, twelve issues of Origins in three volumes, the first volume of Black Lotus, the first volume of Tokyo Nexus, and the first issues of the new volumes of Black Lotus and Tokyo Nexus. The Ash series (2019, 2029, 2039) is outstanding, Origins is pretty good, Tokyo Nexus has potential, Black Lotus is okay. And the price is right.
www.humblebundle.com
So that's twelve issues of Blade Runner 2019 in three volumes, twelve issues of 2029 in three volumes, twelve issues of 2039 in three volumes, twelve issues of Origins in three volumes, the first volume of Black Lotus, the first volume of Tokyo Nexus, and the first issues of the new volumes of Black Lotus and Tokyo Nexus. The Ash series (2019, 2029, 2039) is outstanding, Origins is pretty good, Tokyo Nexus has potential, Black Lotus is okay. And the price is right.
Humble Comic Bundle: The Blade Runner Collection by Titan Comics
Explore dark and compelling stories of Blade Runner’s 2019 gritty LA setting with the The Blade Runner Collection by Titan Comics!
www.humblebundle.com
With frickin’ gigantic file sizes, though — especially if you only use a phone.In other Blade Runner news... Titan Comics has made almost all of their Blade Runner comics available for a very low price through Humble Bundle. Totally legit, and you get PDF and CBZ downloads without DRM. Everything that's been gathered into a graphic novel collection is there in that form, rather than individual issues, plus the special Artist's Edition of the first volume; for the two series (four issues each) that haven't been collected yet, you get the first issue.
So that's twelve issues of Blade Runner 2019 in three volumes, twelve issues of 2029 in three volumes, twelve issues of 2039 in three volumes, twelve issues of Origins in three volumes, the first volume of Black Lotus, the first volume of Tokyo Nexus, and the first issues of the new volumes of Black Lotus and Tokyo Nexus. The Ash series (2019, 2029, 2039) is outstanding, Origins is pretty good, Tokyo Nexus has potential, Black Lotus is okay. And the price is right.
Humble Comic Bundle: The Blade Runner Collection by Titan Comics
Explore dark and compelling stories of Blade Runner’s 2019 gritty LA setting with the The Blade Runner Collection by Titan Comics!
I've read a few comics on my phone, when they're in the Kindle app and can be read panel by panel instead of page by page, but that wouldn't work with these files, as far as I know. Tablets are perfect for comics. My Fire HD 10 cost a fraction of what my iPad cost and gets used a lot for PDFs.
That Entertainment Weekly article does a good job of assuaging any concerns I have with the show and its long development period.
Highlights from the article:
I'm pretty excited about this show now.
Highlights from the article:
“I am so excited for people to see it,” [showrunner Silka Luisa] says smiling. “There is so much legacy with Blade Runner. Every person who touched the show in any way is a huge fan. Everyone was very well aware of the weight of what we were doing, and we did it with great care. And when you’re taking on something like this, you’re very thoughtful and deliberate about each step. That is why it has taken so long, because we wanted to make sure we got it right.”
And getting it right meant threading the needle in terms of paying homage to the past while also offering something new. “We stayed very true to the noir principles of Blade Runner. And there’s a mystery at the heart of the show that looks both forwards and backwards in terms of mythology that fans are gonna be very excited about.”
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“There’s been a replicant uprising that feels like it’s been bubbling up,” Lousia explains. “And between 2049 and 2099, that’s happened. So the war has happened and the humans have lost. Our worst fears imagined.”
Welcome to the new world order. “The replicants are now the power brokers of the city,” says the showrunner. “And humans are the second-class citizens.” (Bummer for us.)
And the story we will see on screen is not just informed and inspired by the two Blade Runner movies, but also by the novel on which the original film is based: Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
Therein lies the main thread of the series. Notes Luisa: “The show is really imagining what comes after us, and what does it mean to be human in a world where humanity is no longer relevant?”
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“We did return to the book for a lot of the world building,” says Luisa. “Because it’s a TV show and you have so many more hours to fill, we have this great opportunity to actually build out the world, and to go to other places, and to build out parts of history and parts of the universe that I feel like fans have been really curious about and just haven’t gotten to see yet. And the book was really helpful in helping us guide us where we could do that.”
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Leading the new cast is Michelle Yeoh as a replicant Blade Runner named Olwen. “She is hunting down a group of missing rogue replicants,” explains Luisa. “She’s in the final days of her life, so she knows she has only days left to live because replicants know down to the day when they’re gonna die. It’s certain and it’s definitive.”
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And they plan to go deep on that vantage point. “We have the benefit of television where you have all of the hours that you could want to explore the nuances of this very relatable and human fear of not wanting to die,” notes Luisa. “There’s something about the idea that you’re not winding down when you die. You’re spiraling out. There’s a volatility, a danger, and a desperation to it, which I think Michelle really tapped into in her performance.”
The other key figure is Olwen’s partner, Cora, played by Euphoria’s Hunter Schafer. Instead of another replicant trying to blend in as a human, Cora is actually the opposite.
“Hunter is playing a human who is a fugitive and has spent her life running from Blade Runners,” explains the showrunner. “And now has to pretend to be one.”
But the act has worked almost too well.
“In this struggle to survive and just trying to live day-to-day, she’s actually lost her humanity,” Luisa says. “So she’s a human who has lost her humanity. And the question for the series is: Once you’ve lost her humanity, can you regain it?”
I love this idea of flipping the roles of replicants and humans in this new world order. There's also a whole section about recapturing the look and feel of the Blade Runner world and doing it with as much practical effects as possible.I'm pretty excited about this show now.
Hold on, what? Replicants won the revolution and took over, but they still have programmed-in expiration dates? Isn't that missing the entire point of what Roy Batty was fighting for?
Well, it depends on when the war was won, and how the new replicants are produced, among other things. We don't really know much yet.
My biggest hope is that 2099 follows 2049's lead and leaves some ambiguity about Deckard's status. This makes me wonder:
As far as I'm concerned, we had at least part of that story with Deckard in 1982. On the other hand, the mention of the novel may be a positive sign, because in the novel -- as in the screenplay and pretty much everything else until Ridley Scott announced a decade after the fact that he saw Deckard as a replicant -- Deckard is very much human.
The Nexus 8 and 9 models had no expiration dates, so the show has a tricky move to pull off to illustrate why a Replicant-ruled society would have expiration dates again.
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My initial reaction to the set-up is not one of excitement, but fingers crossed.
"And there’s a mystery at the heart of the show that looks both forwards and backwards in terms of mythology"
While I am intrigued and hopeful about this bit, it also sounds like something that could retroactively ruin something I like about the two movies if not handled well. So again, fingers crossed.
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My initial reaction to the set-up is not one of excitement, but fingers crossed.
"And there’s a mystery at the heart of the show that looks both forwards and backwards in terms of mythology"
While I am intrigued and hopeful about this bit, it also sounds like something that could retroactively ruin something I like about the two movies if not handled well. So again, fingers crossed.
I can buy a replicant revolution succeeding, but going so far as to be able to take over global society seems… unlikely? There are really that many replicants within only a century of their creation? Westworld at least had the excuse of an alteration of the human population to take control of them, but without something like that I’d find a replicant separatist state or independent outer colony a lot more believable.
And it’s downright weird that a replicant-dominant society would still not only have (replicant) Blade Runners, but call them that. That’s vaguely as if West Germany had continued to have a Gestapo, called the Gestapo.
And it’s downright weird that a replicant-dominant society would still not only have (replicant) Blade Runners, but call them that. That’s vaguely as if West Germany had continued to have a Gestapo, called the Gestapo.
Indeed. Total speculation: whatever they were fighting for, maybe the new government they set up ultimately became authoritarian, with the (replicant) ruling class intentionally maintaining expiration dates among the (replicant) “proles” for social control?
I’m wondering if much or most of humanity has gone off (or been shipped out) to the Outer Colonies at this point. The novel’s Earth is a lot emptier that that of the films; since the article mentions drawing on the book, maybe they’ll go with something like that, to bring in that emptier feel.
EDIT: Hrm. All this Blade Runner talk is making me willing to give Black Lotus another shot, but apparently it’s now only available with a Crunchyroll subscription. Oh well.
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Oof. I feel like if I was a Replitariat I'd be more likely to want to overthrow the government, not less.
Although I guess we don't know what the new expiry dates are. Maybe they're forty years...just long enough that people don't get riled up they way they would if they were handed only four?
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