Fans of the 1982 dystopian classic Blade Runner have been waiting for any news regarding the upcoming sequel. Now they’ve been given a concrete date for when they can hit the cinemas; and it’s not that far away.

Alcon Entertainment, current holders of the Blade Runner name, have announced that January 12th 2018 will be the date eager viewers can get their fix. Harrison Ford is set to reprise his role as Rick Deckard. He will co-star alongside Ryan Gosling.

Speaking about the sequel previously, Ridley Scott stated;

“Alcon bought the title, and asked if I had any ideas. I did. So fundamentally it’s my essay about what happens and what the film is about. I was going to get writers, but decided to call up my old buddy Hampton Fancher because he walks the walk and talks the talk, albeit in these awful sandals. We came up with a nice tight target. He said he wouldn’t write the screenplay, but wrote a short novel. This was one of the writers I had the best experience with, on the original Blade Runner, meeting him every day, polishing the script. We’d solve one problem and there would be another. It drove him crazy but what happened is that what started off as a small contained play inside an apartment, and into an epic. The new one, we’ve got a very good director in Denis Villenueve. He has taken my script, from Hampton and Michael Green, and that’s what he’ll make. I can’t direct them all, and I have to do Prometheus.”

 

The sequel is being written by Hampton Fancher, who co-wrote the original Blade Runner. The story will pick up several decades after the end of the 1982 original. Principal photography is scheduled to start this July with filming to take place in early 2017.