The replicants are coming to television, thanks to Amazon Studios’ creation of a live-action series centered in the ‘Blade Runner’ universe.

Ridley Scott, who directed the first ‘Blade Runner’ film in 1982, is executive producing ‘Blade Runner 2099’, a follow-up to Denis Villeneuve’s feature film sequel ‘Blade Runner 2049’, which was released in 2017.

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Silka Luisa, who is also the showrunner of Apple TV+’s upcoming Elisabeth Moss-led drama ‘Shining Girls’, is writing and exec producing ‘Blade Runner 2099’, which is produced by Alcon Entertainment in collaboration with Scott Free Productions and Amazon Studios.

The project, which would be the first live-action ‘Blade Runner’ series, is currently in pre-production at Amazon Studios, which is rushing scripts and looking at possible production dates. A search for writers to join a room is now ongoing. If the series proceeds forward, Scott might direct, according to sources.

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‘Blade Runner’, a 1982 film based on Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, is set in a dystopian LA in 2019, where synthetic people known as replicants are bio-engineered to work on space colonies by the powerful Tyrell Corporation. A cop reluctantly agrees to track down a fugitive group of advanced replicants who have escaped back to Earth. The film starred Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, and Edward James Olmos.

Ryan Gosling played as a replicant blade runner who discovers a secret that threatens to destabilise society in the 2017 sequel, set in 2049. It also included Ana de Armas, Dave Bautista, and Jared Leto in addition to Ford and Olmos reprising their roles from the original.

The latest entry of the neo-noir sci-fi genre, ‘Blade Runner 2099’, will be set 50 years after the original sequel, as the title suggests.

‘Blade Runner: Black Lotus’, an anime series that debuted late last year on Adult Swim and Crunchyroll, is another instalment in the franchise. It takes place in 2032 and stars Jessica Henwick as a female replicant.

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Since Alcon Entertainment purchased the film, television, and ancillary franchise rights to develop prequels and sequels to the 1982 sci-fi classic in 2011, ‘Blade Runner 2099’ is the most recent addition to the Blade Runner franchise.

The studio behind the Prime Video series The Expanse has been ramping up its Blade Runner franchise efforts in recent years. Last year, it signed a deal with Striker Entertainment to produce a line of Blade Runner consumer goods, and in September, Alcon Entertainment co-founder and co-CEO Andrew Kosove revealed that the company employs two people whose sole responsibility is to maintain the franchise’s timeline and continuity.

Michael Green, who authored Blade Runner 2049, Ben Roberts and Cynthia Yorkin, as well as Scott Free Productions’ David W. Zucker and Clayton Krueger, are executive producing the series alongside Kosove and his Alcon co-founder Broderick Johnson.

Last fall, Blade Runner 2099 was released on Netflix. When Scott teased the idea in November, informing the BBC that a pilot and a bible had been created but didn’t say much further, conversations with Amazon Studios were already in the works. The Blade Runner series is Scott’s second high-profile feature picture to be adapted for television; Noah Hawley is working on a reimagining of Alien for FX, set to go into production in 2023.

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Scott Free Productions is currently working on HBO Max’s sci-fi series ‘Raised By Wolves’, which just finished its second season, Netflix’s heist series ‘Jigsaw,’ Paramount+’s ‘The Good Fight,’ which is in its sixth season, and Steven Knight’s FX and BBC adaptation of Charles Dickens’ ‘Great Expectations.’