Tasked with making the followup to one of the most iconic and influential sci-fi films in cinema history, the weight of expectations on the shoulders of Denis Villeneuve is not lost on the director. But he credits working on the acclaimed “Arrival” for helping him get ready to make the followup to Ridley Scott‘s classic, “Blade Runner 2049.”
” ‘Arrival’ was by far my most effects-oriented movie. It was so different it helped me to feel ready to go on the scope of ‘Blade Runner.’ More specifically, the idea that you start post as you are in prep with the tool of previs. You create in the computer the sequences according to storyboards, like a kind of animated short film. You see the evolution, each shot, the camerawork, the background, everything kind of goes together as you are working. Everybody knows where to go because there’s that kind of computerized short film that is made in pre-production. I hate that. I like to be free on set. I like to be inspired by actors. I like to play with life so I hate when it’s programmed. That’s another battle for the future. I will try to do things in a different way,” he told Deadline.
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“It’s the first time that I had to take the universe of someone else and to make it my own,” Villeneuve continued. “It’s very challenging, the biggest artistic challenge I’ve had in my life probably. Listen, I hesitated a lot before doing it, but when I said yes I committed at one hundred percent and it’s very difficult to talk about it because I’m in the process of doing it, so it’s a bit like asking a hockey player to describe how he will score as he’s going through the other players. It’s a massive challenge.”
However, helping the director along is some tremendous talent, with Harrison Ford, Ryan Gosling, Jared Leto, Robin Wright, Dave Bautista, Ana de Armas, Sylvia Hoeks, Carla Juri, Mackenzie Davis and Barkhad Abdi starring in the movie, that will be scored by Jóhann Jóhannsson and lensed by Roger Deakins. Here’s the official synopsis:
Thirty years after the events of the first film, a new blade runner, LAPD Officer K (Ryan Gosling), unearths a long-buried secret that has the potential to plunge what’s left of society into chaos. K’s discovery leads him on a quest to find Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a former LAPD blade runner who has been missing for 30 years.
“Blade Runner 2049” opens on October 6, 2017.