It may not attract the same crazed fandom as, say, Justice League or Marvel’s Black Panther, but with San Diego Comic-Con fast approaching, Blade Runner 2049 has been quietly ushered into the spotlight.
Following up on Empire’s neon cover reveal, Entertainment Weekly has returned from future Los Angeles bearing gifts: four haunting new images designed to showcase some of the supporting players of Denis Villeneuve’s long-in-development sequel. And not a moment too soon.
Throughout 2049‘s marketing blitz, 20th Century Fox has placed a particular emphasis on Ryan Gosling’s LAPD rookie K and Harrison Ford, who reprises as the great Rick Deckard. But today heralds a change of pace, as EW’s media dump draws attention to Robin Wright (House of Cards), who stares down the face of a mysterious character – a Replicant, perhaps?
And though many believe Blade Runner 2049 is treading on hallowed ground, Denis Villeneuve and DP Roger Deakins aren’t taking the Blade Runner legacy lightly, as Ryan Gosling tells EW:
Here’s a perfect example of working on this film. In the script, my character walks up to a guy sitting at a desk, and we have a very small exchange. It’s probably a quarter of a page of the screenplay. I show up at set that day and that is what they built.” He laughs. I said to [director Denis Villeneuve], ‘You built all this for just one scene? It takes up an entire stage!’ And he said, ‘Yes, well, the scene is in the movie, right?’ It didn’t matter if it was a quarter of a page or an important set piece — everything was treated with the same level of detail and importance.
This painstaking creative process is something Denis Villenueve embraced with arms wide open, as he believed it was the only way to approach such a lush, thriving sci-fi world.
It’s not the amount of time [on screen] but the impact of the moment. This film had the longest and toughest casting I’ve ever done. Each extra had to be chosen specifically for their look—we had to get the right faces to bring the right atmosphere to the right scene. Everything — the sets, the lights, the props, the vehicles — they are all saying something about our future.
Staying true to the time difference between 2049 and its genre-defining original, Villeneuve’s follow-up takes place a full 30 years after the events of Ridley Scott’s flawed masterpiece, and it seems the years have not been kind to planet Earth.
The climate has gone berserk and the ecosystem has collapsed and the ocean has risen. There are a lot of refugees trying to survive on the West Coast.
Do androids dream of electric sheep? Blade Runner 2049 bows on October 6th.