New Blade Runner won't have anything to do with Harrison Ford, nor will it be seen for a while

By Sean O'Neal | August 19, 2011 | 3:23pm

Aux Features Film

If yesterday’s back-to-back news of the Scott Brothers’ mission to remake two things that do not need remaking left you sadder and emptier than usual—buck up, soldier. Not only will Tony Scott’s supposed Wild Bunch update likely wither under Hollywood’s current fear of the Western, but Ridley Scott’s expansion of Blade Runner won’t begin shooting until 2013 at the earliest, so by the time it hits theaters in 2014, you’ll either be too busy rioting in the streets for potable water to see it, or technology will have advanced to where ignoring it is a simple matter of programming your Netflix implant. And if, by some miracle, neither of those scenarios has come to pass, perhaps fans who believe the original is sacrosanct will be relieved to know that the new Blade Runner won’t have much to do with the old Blade Runner at all. Instead, producers promise that, like Scott’s upcoming Alien-prequel-but-not-really Prometheus, it will “stand as separately as possible”—which means no grumpy old Harrison Ford adding a new wrinkle, as it were, to the “Is Deckard a Replicant?” argument.

“If you're asking me will this movie have anything to do with Harrison Ford, the answer is no,” Alcon co-founder Andrew Kosove tells the Los Angeles Times. “This is a total reinvention, and in my mind that means doing everything fresh, including casting." (That far-off sound of breaking glass hails from Sean Young’s house.) Also reassuring, we guess: “We want people to know that we're very serious about doing this in an artistic way,” Kosove adds. “This isn't just commercial fodder.” And if you can’t trust a statement like that from the company that gave us The Wicker Man remake, The Blind Side, and the Sisterhood Of The Traveling Pants franchise, who can you trust?