Blade Runner 2: Written By Someone Who Probably Needs A Slap
Then buzz it up
September 30th, 2008 at 16:30 by Stuart Heritage
We’ve never met Travis Wright, but we imagine that he hates you - otherwise he wouldn’t be deliberately provoking you like this.
You see, Travis Wright is one of the writers of Eagle Eye - the movie that’s top of the American box office despite looking like it was crapped out by a puppy with a gammy tummy - and for his next trick he says he’s working on a script for Blade Runner 2.
Obviously Travis Wright writing a Blade Runner 2 script is a terrible idea. Not because of the important cultural significance of the original or anything, though. No, we’re dead against the idea of Blade Runner 2 for one reason and one reason only - it’ll probably end up having bloody Shia LaBeouf in it, won’t it.
If you were to make a list of films that nobody should ever think about giving a sequel to, Blade Runner would be right at the top, along with The Godfather and James Bond. Blade Runner was an especially singular film; both direct enough to work as an action movie and vague enough for its audience to interpret it however it wanted. The last thing it needs is a sequel.
But tell that to Travis Wright, one of the co-writers of Eagle Eye. According to an email received by Slashfilm, he’s working on a sequel to Blade Runner himself right now:
“I recently attended a Q&A session with one of the writers of ‘Eagle Eye’ after a free screening organized by the magazine Creative Screenwriting. During the Q&A, the writer said that he and whomever it was that helped him co-write the ‘Eagle Eye’ screenplay were in the process of writing a sequel to Blade Runner, and had already contacted the producers of the original, etc.”
Best of all, according to the email, the full title of Wright’s script is Blade Runner 2: Meet The Deckards! and proposes that Eddie Murphy will star as all of Harrison Ford’s extended family.
That’s a lie. Actually the Blade Runner 2 script is still going to be set in 2019, but with Phillip K Dick’s technologically dystopian worldview reduced into something a bit more realistic-seeming to audiences of 2008. To mirror this, during the movie’s climax, when Harrison Ford kills another replicant who looks a bit like Rutger Hauer, the replicant gives this stirring soliloquy:
“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. A cat in a shoe on the internet. A drunk man trying to bum a Landrover at lunchtime. A Nintendo Wii. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain…”
That’s a lie as well. In fact, by all accounts it seems as if Blade Runner 2 hasn’t got any sort of studio backing whatsoever, and that Travis Wright is just writing it in the dim hope that someone one day will want to pay for it.
That’s fairly unlikely to happen - not many people are stupid enough to want to sully a classic like Blade Runner with an rashly thought-out sequel - and so the fate of Blade Runner 2 is set.
It’ll be filmed in the woods on someone’s mobile phone and star a couple of blokes from accounts and the HR lady’s sister, the way all good sci-fi sequels should be.
Read more:
Exclusive: Eagle Eye Co-Writers Working on Blade Runner 2 - Slashfilm
Related and recent:
- SLACKERJACK - Line Runner
- Creased or Folded? hecklerspray Tells You the Way it is
- SLACKERJACK - Roadie Runner
- Win The Kite Runner On DVD Right Now
- Gillette’s Five - Nope, Six - Blade Fusion
- Wesley Snipes Staring At Three Years In Jail
- SLACKERJACK - Rose & Camellia
- Dancing On Ice Betting Odds: Suzanne Shaw To Win?
September 30th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
hopefully he will choke on some producers cock before he finishes the screenplay. this cant happen.
September 30th, 2008 at 5:56 pm
I didn’t mind K.W Jeter’s sequel to the novel/film, but then I like him as a writer. If he doesn’t write, produce, direct - and then quite sensibly ban this film from ever being seen that’ll be fine by me.
They should make a film of his Noir or Goodbye Horizontal instead.
F**k. I was serious there for a second wasn’t I? It’ll never happen again, I swear.
September 30th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
I heard the douch bag has sucked that much cock he’s mastered the art of controlling his gag.If there ever was a sequel it wouldn’t be entrusted to such a turd.It would need the very best writers out ther and a guarantee that Ridley Scott would be directing.
Infact lets leave it alone, surely someone out there will make some thoughtful science fiction without la Boeuf or Will Smith.
September 30th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
Since they ballsed up A Scanner Darkly by making it into a pretentious cartoon with Canoe Reeves in it, I don’t hold out much hope for a good PKD film. I’d like to see Radio Free Albemuth, or Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said done well, but I’m fairly sure I won’t.
October 1st, 2008 at 2:52 pm
Can’t they just put out another directors cut?
October 1st, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Dude, the Godfather had a sequel… two sequels, in fact
October 1st, 2008 at 4:27 pm
A really wonderful “sequel” to Bladerunner has already been made. Shu Lea Chang’s excellent I.K.U. picks up where the original left off, in the elevator of Deckard’s building. While in the tradition of soft-core riff on a popular title, it’s a compelling art house feature that stands on it’s own.
October 1st, 2008 at 6:55 pm
not only does the godfather have two sequels, but there are like 42942959 james bond movies.. you probably could have thought of a few better examples
October 1st, 2008 at 7:46 pm
Oh yeah, I forgot some people on the internet were stupid… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony
October 1st, 2008 at 8:07 pm
[...] This is not. [...]
October 1st, 2008 at 9:53 pm
You wouldn’t think they’d sully a film like ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ with a rashly thought out remake either…
October 1st, 2008 at 11:00 pm
Obviously Jeter should be writing the sequel, as he wrote the sequel to the original book and he was good friends with Philip K Dick (the author of Blade Runner/Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep).
And Jeters sequels were actually pretty good.
October 1st, 2008 at 11:09 pm
[...] alergia fulminante que ha despertado el rumor ha sido casi unánime. Por ejemplo, Heckler Spray tacha tal posibilidad de mentira, además de hipótesis desquiciada: “Si fuera a hacer una [...]
October 1st, 2008 at 11:30 pm
andrew: “not only does the godfather have two sequels, but there are like 42942959 james bond movies.. you probably could have thought of a few better examples”
The point is, yes there are sequels, but they were JUST AS unneeded as a Blade Runner sequel
October 2nd, 2008 at 1:33 am
Shia LaBeouf makes me miss River Phoenix.
October 2nd, 2008 at 3:47 am
[...] Allegedly coming to us from the screenwriter of Eagle Eye. [...]
October 2nd, 2008 at 4:17 am
Actually, I would like to see Bladerunner II. Does he marry Rachael the replicant? Is he a replicant?
October 2nd, 2008 at 8:50 am
yep, they have a replicant wedding. and they find a way to live forever. and the sun finally comes out.
awwwwwww…..
October 2nd, 2008 at 10:32 am
Er… if they want to make a sequel why shouldn’t they use the other books by Philip K. Dick? there are several in the same storyline. (some better than others).
I think it’s a trilogy, but I don’t remember the names of the books… a couple of the stories have already been filmed, and one of them: Screamers (where Philip still is building robots that start looking like humans), is getting a sequel in 2009. There is another one I can’t remember where they build people that doesn’t know they are replicants (this one is post “blade runner”)…
October 2nd, 2008 at 6:57 pm
If this ever happens I will be morally obligated to first deal with whoever is managing the Dick estate because they are obviously shitheads and then to help Wright pull his head out of his ass for being so pretentious as to think he could even live up to the original.