Blade Runner 2099 has officially shown off its first trailer. The new Prime Video series also looks to be avoiding some of the major pitfalls that other high-profile adaptations have fallen into.
“In Los Angeles 2099, Cora lived her entire life on the run, a chameleon forced to adopt numerous identities,” reads the official logline for the show. “To secure a stable future for her brother, she assumes one final identity and is forced to partner with Olwen, a Blade Runner who’s confronting the end of her life. The two are pulled into a widening conspiracy that poses an existential threat to a city that’s fighting to be reborn.”
The cast for the series includes Michelle Yeoh as Olwen, Hunter Schafer as Cora, Lewis Gribben, Tom Burke, Maurizio Lombardi, Daniel Rigby, Dmitri Abold, Katelyn Rose Downey, Johnny Harris, Amy Lennox, Sheila Atim, and Matthew Needham. The series is written and executive produced by showrunner Silka Luisa, with Jonathan van Tulleken serving as a director.
Blade Runner 2099 looks like a surprisingly worthy entry in the sci-fi franchise
The new trailer for the show drops fans right into the world of Blade Runner. Taking place after both the original 1982 film and 2017’s Blade Runner 2049, 2099 picks up in a world where replicants and humans are continuing to fight, with Schafer and Yeoh partnering up in an unexpected way. Besides that, though, the series looks to be plucked right out of the film franchise.
The show absolutely featured the kind of futuristic, near-dystopian sci-fi looks, complete with the yellow and blue hues that Blade Runner has come to be known for, as well as the massive and sprawling futuristic Los Angeles that has housed the franchise. Above all else, the series is doing something some of its other contemporaries aren’t by capturing the vibes and tone of the original.
Blade Runner 2099 isn’t the first show to try and build a TV universe off of a successful franchise on film. Fans need only to look to Prime Video’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and HBO’s Dune: Prophecy as recent examples. Both of those shows are based on extremely popular franchises, but for one reason or another, had trouble finding the footing it needed when they first premiered.
In The Rings of Power’s case, the show failed to capture the spirit and tone of what made people fall in love with The Lord of the Rings, while Dune: Prophecy was criticized for focusing too much on the minutiae of the world of Dune, and not giving fans enough of its enormous world. Both of these shows continue to air and will likely improve, but it seems like Blade Runner 2099 is learning a lesson from them before it even airs. Instead of having to worry about improving after its premiere, the show seems ready to include all of what makes Blade Runner so special right away, and will be a better overall product for it.
