Harrison Ford not set for Blade Runner sequel, say producers

The producers of Ridley Scott's forthcoming followup to his 1982 sci-fi cult classic Blade Runner have denied that Harrison Ford is returning to the role of Rick Deckard . Twitchfilm reported yesterday that Ford was in early talks to reprise his role as the future cop, who is tasked with hunting down a gang of rogue bioengineered humanoids, called "replicants", in Scott's earlier film, itself based on the Philip K Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? However, producer Andrew Kosove of Alcon Entertainment told Deadline: "It is absolutely patently false that there has been any discussion about Harrison Ford being in Blade Runner. To be clear, what we are trying to do with Ridley now is go through the painstaking process of trying to break the back of the story, figure out the direction we're going to take the movie and find a writer to work on it. The casting of the movie could not be further from our minds at this moment." Kosove compared the Blade Runner followup to Scott's long-awaited forthcoming return to science fiction, Prometheus , which has been described as a film which is not a prequel or sequel, but exists within "the same universe" as its predecessor, 1979's Alien. "What Ridley does in Prometheus is a good template for what we're trying to do," he said. "He created something that has some association to the original Alien, but lives on its own as a standalone movie." Kosove was asked if Scott's plans might allow Ford to return. "In advance of knowing what we're going to do, I supposed you could say yes, he could," he replied. "But I think it is quite unlikely." Talk of Ford returning to the series sparked huge online debate yesterday, with many arguing that the actor's appearance in the movie would ruin Blade Runner's central enigma: whether Deckard is himself a replicant . The point has been argued back and forth by fans in the 30 years since the original film's release, resurfacing whenever a fresh cut of the film emerges. There have been several of these: Scott's 1992 director's cut, which excised the original version's studio-enforced expositional voiceover and pegged-on "happy ending", seen by many as the definitive version.