True to his word, director Denis Villeneuve has pulled no punches during the creation of Blade Runner 2049.
A student of science fiction after his Oscar-nominated work on Arrival – not to mention his involvement in Legendary’s long-in-development Dune reboot – Villeneuve has long made it clear that he hopes to honor Ridley Scott’s seminal sci-fi classic with the release of 2049, and the newly-unveiled prequel film, 2036: Nexus Dawn, helps fill the gap between one Blade Runner movie and the next.
And though it’s impossible to gauge a film’s quality based on its running time, we’re learning that Blade Runner 2049 will clock in at a whopping two hours and 32 minutes, plus another 11 minutes for credits. For the sake of comparison, that’s 35 minutes longer than the 1982 classic, which tapped out at one hour and 57 minutes.
Meanwhile, 2049 has amassed a star-studded roster of talent ranging from Ana de Armas, Sylvia Hoeks, Robin Wright, Mackenzie Davis, Carla Juri, Lennie James, Infinity War actor Dave Bautista, Edward James Olmos and Jared Leto (Suicide Squad 2, Gotham City Sirens) as Neander Wallace.
Perched at the tip-top of the Tyrell Corporation, Wallace is the city’s leading Replicant creator, and deems those cutting-edge synthetics to be the future of the human race. That’s an arc you’ll see unfold via 2036: Nexus Dawn, which bears more than a few similarities to the prequel shorts that launched online in the build-up to Alien: Covenant – another continuation of a Scott classic.
Blade Runner 2049 has a release date of October 6th. That’s a corridor it currently shares with My Little Pony: The Movie and The Mountain Between Us, but of the three, which movie do you think will reign supreme at the box office? You can, as always, leave your thoughts and predictions in the usual place.