Ridley Scott regrets his decision to direct Alien: Covenant over Blade Runner 2049, the sequel to his 1982 sci-fi classic.
The acclaimed filmmaker had to step down from the Blade Runner sequel in 2017 due to a scheduling conflict with the Prometheus follow-up, making the director’s chair vacant for Denis Villeneuve. However, Scott spoke candidly about this decision in a recent Empire piece (via Deadline) and said he resented the choice.
“I shouldn’t have had to make that decision,” Scott asserted. “But I had to. I should have done Blade Runner 2.”
While he can’t turn back the clock, Scott is returning to the dystopian world of Blade Runner for a live-action series at Amazon. Titled Blade Runner 2099, the show takes place 50 years after Villeneuve’s movie sequel, with Scott executive producing alongside Michael Green, Tom Spezialy, and showrunner Silka Luisa.
“I’m one of the producers,” Scott said of his involvement with the project. “It’s all set years on. To me, it circles the idea of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.”
Blade Runner 2099 has been in the works for a while, with Scott confirming in November 2021 that the team had already locked in the plot, though story details remained under wraps. It is also not clear whether this project will affect Villeneuve’s hopes of returning to the Blade Runner universe for another movie.
“I’d like to revisit this universe in a different way,” Villeneuve said a few years after the theatrical release of Blade Runner 2049. “It would need to be a project on its own. Something disconnected from both other movies. A detective noir story set in the future… I wake up sometimes in the night dreaming about it.”
Despite its popularity among critics and fans, Blade Runner 2049 underperformed at the box office, opening to a less-than-expected $32 million. Scott attributed the movie’s shortcomings to its lengthy runtime, telling Al Arabiya’s William Mullally in 2017: “It’s slow. It’s slow. Long. Too long. I would have taken out half an hour”.
Adele Ankers-Range is a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.
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