Way back in 2014, before the orcas had rebelled, before the virus, before we learned that Alexander Hamilton could rap, Ridley Scott was the belle of the ball: 20th Century Fox wanted him to make another Alien movie, and Warner Bros. wanted him to make another Blade Runner movie. Jurassic World and The Force Awakens weren’t out yet, and the idea of doing a new entry in a legendary film franchise was still a relatively novel and exciting idea. Scott must’ve been on top of the world!
But then one of Scott’s suitors developed an ugly new personality trait: jealousy. Forced to choose between the movie that would become Alien: Covenant and the movie that would become Blade Runner 2049, Scott chose the Xenomorphs—or at least a prototype version of the Xenomorphs—over Rick Deckard and the replicants. It all worked out fine, with Covenant being fairly well-received and Denis Villeneuve’s 2049 arguably being better than the original Blade Runner (that’s us, we’re the ones arguing that), but Scott has some regrets about the whole thing.
Scott said as much in a recent Empire piece (via Deadline), saying, “I shouldn’t have had to make that decision, but I had to.” The implication there, in case it wasn’t clear before now, is that Fox made Scott chose between the two projects, and he chose Covenant, but he also told Emprie that he “should have done Blade Runner 2” as well. It’s an interesting “what if” scenario, because 2049 was very good in our reality, but also Villeneuve was presumably working off of a pretty similar script the one Scott would’ve used. Maybe the cast would’ve been different? Maybe Harrison Ford wouldn’t have been as game?
Either way, Scott will still get to live out his “return to Blade Runner” dreams a little bit, since he’s executive producing Prime Video’s Blade Runner 2099 series. We don’t know much about the series, but it will most likely have to acknowledge some of the big things that happened in 2049—namely the revelation that replicants can have children (happy belated second birthday to young Ana Stelline, who is hopefully doing okay in Lennie James’ orphanage with her little wooden horse). Also, we live in the world where Scott is making a Gladiator sequel, so he’s clearly still the belle of the ball.
(But if Scott had made 2049, who would be making the Dune movies now???)