Euphoria star Hunter Schafer is the latest to join the cast of Blade Runner 2099, the upcoming Prime Video limited series that continues on the story of Blade Runner and its decades-later sequel Blade Runner 2049. The franchise, based on the novel Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick, has a complicated history in Hollywood, with the first movie losing money at the box office but becoming one of the most acclaimed and influential science fiction movies of all time. Years later and with the reputation of the original now solidified, Harrison Ford returned for Blade Runner 2049, hoping for a victory lap…but then that movie also underperformed relative to studio expectations.
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Schafer will star opposite Michelle Yeoh in the series, about which there are basically no real details available. Blade Runner 2099 opened up as a possibility after lengthy production delays on Euphoria led HBO to allow the cast to pursue other work until they have all the scripts in shape and are ready to shoot — something that is expected to happen later this year. Deadline, who first reported her Blade Runner casting, says that it’s now likely a third season would have to shoot around the cast’s crowded schedule.
Production on Blade Runner 2099 has apparently been going on for a while now, after a lengthy break due to last year’s writers’ and actors’ strikes. Originally planned to shoot in Belfast, the series is instead filming in Prague via Film United.
Schafer, who exploded onto the scene after she made her acting debut as Jules on Euphoria, also recently played Tigris Snow in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Next up, she has the A24 movie Mother Mary, which also stars Anne Hathaway; and Neon’s Cuckoo, which hits theaters in August.
Ridley Scott’s 1982 Blade Runner kickstarted the screen franchise, but in spite of becoming an instant cult classic, the movie didn’t get a sequel for 35 years. In 2017, Ryan Gosling joined Ford for Blade Runner 2049, and while that movie didn’t spawn future installments in the film franchise, producers and studios have been buzzing about Blade Runner‘s potential ever since.
Blade Runner 2099 will be showrun by Silka Luisa (Shining Girls, who will serve as executive producer along with Scott, Alcon Entertainment co-founders Andrew Kosove and Broderick Johnson, Alcon’s President of Television Ben Roberts, David W. Zucker and Clayton Krueger from Scott Free Productions, Tom Spezialy, Richard Sharkey, Michael Green, Cynthia Yorkin, Frank Giustra and Isa Dick Hackett. Per Deadline, Shōgun‘s Jonathan van Tulleken will be directing the first two episodes and also serve as EP, with Steven Johnson as co-executive producer.
