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Ryan Gosling
Leading man ... Ryan Gosling is expected to join Blade Runner 2. Photograph: Jean Catuffe/FilmMagic
Leading man ... Ryan Gosling is expected to join Blade Runner 2. Photograph: Jean Catuffe/FilmMagic

Ridley Scott: Ryan Gosling will 'probably' lead Blade Runner sequel

This article is more than 8 years old

With Harrison Ford confirmed to return as Deckard, Scott has hinted that Gosling will take the role of the follow-up’s central character

Ridley Scott has suggested that Ryan Gosling will take the lead in the new Blade Runner film, with original star Harrison Ford in a supporting role.

Gosling was first reported to be in talks to join the sequel, which is set many decades in the future from the first film’s 2019 Los Angeles setting, in April. Prisoners and Sicario director Denis Villeneuve is taking charge of the cameras on the new film, with Ford returning as “blade runner” Rick Deckard and Scott in a producer’s role.

Interviewed by Den of Geek, the veteran film-maker suggested that Gosling was close to signing on and would move front and centre for the follow-up.

“I think Ryan Gosling is probably going to do it, with Harrison,” said Scott. Asked whether the Drive actor would be the central character, he replied: “Yeah, yeah. I can’t really say more than that, because it’ll give away the story. But Harrison’s definitely in it. In an important way.”

Scott, 77, also revealed Canadian film-maker Villeneuve, currently winning rave reviews for Tex-Mex crime thriller Sicario, had not been his first choice for the director’s role. “It’s a hard one,” he said. “I asked somebody before, who I thought would be right – I would rather not say who it is. He just said, ‘I’m not going to do that, I’m never going to follow through on that.’”

Blade Runner 2 will be written by Hampton Fancher, who worked on the first film. Scott said the screenplay is now complete.

Based on the 1968 Philip K Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Blade Runner was not a hit on its initial release but has gathered plaudits over the years. Set in an overpopulated future Los Angeles that never sees the sunlight, Scott’s movie is about a “blade runner”, played by Ford, who is tasked with hunting down a gang of replicants (android outlaws) who have escaped to Earth from an off-world colony. The film-maker left the audience to decide whether Deckard himself is a replicant.

Negative criticism of the 1982 theatrical release was largely reversed with the arrival in 1992 of Scott’s director’s cut, which excised the original’s voiceover and a pegged-on “happy ending”. Blade Runner will mark the film-maker’s second attempt at reviving one of his classic early science fiction efforts: Alien prequel-of-sorts Prometheus was released in 2012 to reasonable reviews and an impressive $403m in global box office receipts. Scott, who is currently promoting his acclaimed space drama The Martian, said last week that up to three Prometheus sequels are now planned, with the final film leading up to the events of 1979’s Alien.

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