Amazon Prime Video’s live action Blade Runner series could be delayed by as long as a year after the production schedule was disrupted amid the writers strike.
The BBC reported that filming on Blade Runner 2099 was due to get underway at Northern Ireland’s Belfast Harbour Studios, but could now be pushed back until Spring 2024.
The writers strike, which is now in its third week, was cited as a factor in the postponement. Amazon had no comment.
Northern Ireland Screen said: “Northern Ireland Screen is extremely disappointed that Blade Runner 2099 is not going ahead at this time due to the ongoing writers’ strike.
“The project has been prepping on the ground in Belfast for many months now. The WGA strike has been halting production all over the world and we hope a fair deal is reached soon so crew can get back to work.”
Amazon Prime Video took Blade Runner 2099 to series last September after Deadline revealed in February that it was in priority development at Amazon Studios.
Ridley Scott, who directed the original 1982 Blade Runner movie, is executive producing the series, set 50 years after the Blade Runner movie sequel, Blade Runner 2049, which was released in 2017 and was directed by Denis Villeneuve.
Silka Luisa, showrunner of Apple TV+’s Shining Girls, is writing and executive producing Blade Runner 2099, which comes from Alcon Entertainment in association with Scott Free Productions and Amazon Studios.
The 1982 Blade Runner, an adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, is set in a dystopian LA in 2019, in which synthetic humans known as replicants are bio-engineered by the powerful Tyrell Corporation to work on space colonies. When a fugitive group of advanced replicants escape back to Earth, a cop reluctantly agrees to hunt them down. Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young and Edward James Olmos starred.
The 2017 sequel, which is set in 2049, starred Ryan Gosling as a replicant blade runner, who uncovers a secret that threatens to destabilize society. Ford and Olmos reprised their roles from the original and it also featured Ana de Armas, Dave Bautista, and Jared Leto.
deadline.com
