Prime Video's Blade Runner 2099 has been in the pipeline for some time now. First announced in 2021, the live-action series is finally set to debut later this year, and in an interview with Entertainment Weekly (via SFFGazette.com), showrunner Silka Luisa has shed new light on what fans can expect from this latest chapter in the iconic sci-fi franchise.
Taking over one of science fiction's most iconic worlds was no easy task, and Luisa turned to Blade Runner 2049 writer Michael Green, who played a crucial role in developing the show.
"He was a really important part of the development process," she explained. "I came in with the pitch and basic concept for the show, the characters, and all of that, but Michael had been through writing 2049. He knew the world really well. He knew the pitfalls. He knew the strengths. He understood how to build out the kind of noir mystery for it. And so he was very helpful."
The other creative force helping shape the series was original Blade Runner director Ridley Scott, who also executive produces the show with Green. "What an incredible experience," Luisa gushed. "It's once in a lifetime to have your hero sit down with you and tell you what it was like making your favourite movie."
"It was really important for Ridley to be a part of the development process," she added. "Because both visually and in terms of story, there are mythological canon points in his film that we're touching, and it was really important to both get his blessing and have his insight into what his original intentions were."
Set 50 years after the events of Blade Runner 2049 (hence the title), the series offers a dramatically different version of Los Angeles. According to Luisa, humanity has suffered a devastating defeat after a "replicant uprising" which took place between the movie and this TV show. As she put it, "The war has happened, and the humans have lost. Our worst fears imagined."
"The replicants are now the power brokers of the city," Luisa noted, citing Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? as a source of inspiration. "And humans are the second-class citizens."
Fans hoping for the return of Harrison Ford's Rick Deckard or Ryan Gosling's K shouldn't get their hopes up, however. "We are taking place so much in the future that obviously none of the same characters is around," Luisa confirmed, revealing that the story instead revolves around Michelle Yeoh as Olwen, a replicant Blade Runner and Hunter Schafer as Cora.
"[Olwen] is hunting down a group of missing rogue replicants," Luisa revealed. "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."
"Hunter is playing a human who is a fugitive and has spent her life running from Blade Runners," Luisa explained. "And now has to pretend to be one. In this struggle to survive and just trying to live day-to-day, she's actually lost her humanity. 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?"
Blade Runner 2099 is set to premiere later this year. You can check out some first-look stills from the series below.