Corona | Coming Attractions

As Ridley Scott puts the post-production work on Prometheus, a tantalazing rumor surfaced two days ago on Twitchfilm that ignited the online community. Could the makers of the new Blade Runner movie be in talks with none other than Harrison Ford? And if so, as the site claimed was happening, what would Ford do in the movie? Would that make the new Blade Runner flick a sequel, or would the nearly 70-year-old actor be cast in a different part than his noir detective Rick Deckard?

The story takes a different turn today as Deadline reached producer Andrew Kosove at Alcon Entertainment and got him to deny Twitchfilm's report. "It is absolutely patently false that there has been any discussion about Harrison Ford being in Blade Runner," Kosove said about the rumor. "To be clear, what we are trying to do with Ridley now is go through the painstaking process of trying to break the back of the story, figure out the direction we’re going to take the movie and find a writer to work on it. The casting of the movie could not be further from our minds at this moment."

Kosove did leave the door open that a deal could be reached with Ford to star in the new Blade Runner movie, but that the chances of the stars aligning in that particular arrangment was "quite unlikely." So why did Twitchfilm say very clearly that talks were happening with Ford to star in the picture? Was their source in error?

As this new Blade Runner movie slowly coagulates together, at least the Ford rumor got one of its key creative personnel to give us an update on what the project's status was. And if this next statement from Kosove could be taken at face value, if/when the new Blade Runner starts shooting it'll be very similar in its story approach to the movie that Ridley Scott is currently cutting. "What Ridley does in Prometheus is a good template for what we’re trying to do. He created something that has some association to the original Alien, but lives on its own as a standalone movie."

What that tells me is that Kosove and his team want to go back to the source to mine the minerals but it's going to be a new story in the same Blade Runner universe. Maybe things will be set well after Deckard fled rain-soaked Los Angeles with Rachel, and then maybe it won't. With only 7 years to go until we arrive at the year the movie is set in, I can't see whatever this new Blade Runner film will be as anything else than a sequel.

And maybe that's why it does make a kind of logical sense to imagine a grey-haired Deckard returning on-screen.