Following his Alien prequel Prometheus, Ridley Scott is once again set to return to his back catalogue of classic sci-fi noir for a planned sequel to Blade Runner. The original film followed a rough edged detective in a grim dystopian future who reluctantly accepts a final assignment hunting down a group of dangerous escaped androids. It was based on the novel “Do androids dream of electric sheep?” written by master sci-fi author Philip k. Dick.

Harrison Ford was reportedly in early talks to join the film in some capacity. Despite Ridley Scott’s claim that the sequel would be made “not with the past cast, of course,” and producer Andrew Kosove, already said last year:

“…if you’re asking me will this movie have anything to do with Harrison Ford, the answer is no. This is a total reinvention, and in my mind that means doing everything fresh, including casting.”

Responding to the rumours Alcon Entertainment has confirmed whatever Ridley Scott’s new Blade Runner turns out to be, Harrison Ford almost certainly won’t be in it. Andrew Kosove again confirms

“It is absolutely patently false that there has been any discussion about Harrison Ford being in Blade Runner. 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. It’s like asking if we’re going to make the sky red or blue. There has been no discussion about it. In advance of knowing what we’re going to do, I suppose you could say yes, [Ford] could [return],” Kosove admits. “But I think it is quite unlikely.”

“What Ridley’s doing in Prometheus is a good template for what we’re trying to do,” Kosove says. “He created something that has some association to the original Alien, but lives on its own as a standalone movie.”

 
If he did feature as his original character it might finally put an end to decades of fan debate about whether or not his character Deckard was actually supposed to be an android himself. Ford has always maintained that Deckard was human while Scott has confessed he always envisioned him as being an android.

 
The original film is notoriously ambiguous on this point. Despite the fact that there have been seven different versions of the film released over the years none of them ever killed of the debate. Perhaps one way or another, this new film might finally do just that.