Arrival scooping eight Academy Award nominations including Best Picture and Best Director, coupled with the early reactions to Dune calling it a generational masterpiece, have made it abundantly clear that Denis Villenueve is an expert at delivering thought-provoking sci-fi.
That means it has to sting that the filmmaker’s Blade Runner 2049 failed to perform in line with expectations at the box office, despite critics deeming it a worthy successor to Ridley Scott’s classic original. It did finally manage to land Roger Deakins his Oscar for Best Cinematography at the fourteenth attempt, though, but any plans for a third installment were shelved after the $185 million epic topped out with a global haul of $260 million.
Villenueve did admit at the beginning of last year that he’d love to revisit the Blade Runner universe in some fashion, and a new rumor from Giant Freakin Robot claims that a third movie is in development at Warner Bros. There’s no additional information provided other than the vague claim that “the movie is still in the early stages”, so any further details remain non-existent.
The outlet also reported earlier this year that a live-action TV show was happening, but we haven’t heard anything else on that front either, so it’s best not to get too hyped about a return to the world of Blade Runner just yet. Fans would love to see it happen, but it would be both a major investment and serious risk on the studio’s part to green light another big budget blockbuster after 2049 yielded such disappointing returns.