Ridley Scott sat down to talk with the Wall Street Journal’s SpeakEasy blog and a pair of posts (here and here) offer up news on two of Scott’s upcoming projects, one being Prometheus, which is due to hit theaters on June 8, 2012, and the other being the previously announced new installment in the Blade Runner franchise. Neither tidbit is necessarily all that revealing, but if you’re like me these are two projects you’re really looking forward to seeing.
First for the new Blade Runner feature, which we know very little about so far as speculation wonder whether it would be a sequel or a prequel to the 1982 film that was loosely based on the Philip K. Dick novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” That question seems to have been answered as Scott tells SpeakEasy’s Barbara Chai it’s “liable to be a sequel” and that he may have found someone to write it adding, “I think I’m close to finding a writer that might be able to help me deliver… we’re quite a long way in, actually.”
How far in? Well, he does note that the cast from the previous film is unlikely to be included. However, when asked whether Harrison Ford‘s Deckard would make an appearance the response was, “No, not really.”
Not really? What does that mean? Either he’s in or he’s out? Then again, perhaps we’re looking at another one of those DNA things as he’s referred to Prometheus, a film that began as a prequel to Alien but has since morphed into something with “strands of Alien‘s DNA,” a comment that seems to continually be addressed and is addressed head on in the second SpeakEasy piece with the director.
Here a scattering of quotes lead to the one most other movie blogs have keyed in on: “The last eight minutes of the Prometheus story evolve into ‘a pretty good DNA of the Alien one.’” But those looking for even further clues may be interested in this snippet:
The central metaphor of Prometheus is about a “higher being” (Scott’s words) who challenges the gods, and the gods don’t want to give him fire. “Fire is our first form of technology,’ Scott says, and so by taking fire, the higher being is punished “in perpetuity in a horrible fashion.” Much like the story of the mythological god, Prometheus, who stole fire from Zeus and for his actions was bound to a rock with an eagle eternally devouring his liver. (Let’s hope things turn out differently for our higher being…)
This isn’t necessarily “new” information as I’ve discussed much of this previously, but hearing it from the horse’s mouth is always likely to be more interesting than to hear it from me. So there you have it.
