Featurette delves into the making of Blade Runner 2049

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

Roger Deakins needs an Oscar. I've been insisting this for years now. I believe the man is the best cinematographer working today, but he has yet to go home with the gold. The Academy keeps dangling the Oscar in front of him, he has been nominated for the Best Achievement in Cinematography award for his work on thirteen different films over the last twenty-two years, including several Coen brothers movies, THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD, and the James Bond film SKYFALL. But when the presenters open the envelope and speak the name of the winner, it's never Deakins.

Maybe the fourteenth time is the charm. Maybe BLADE RUNNER 2049, the long-awaited sequel to Ridley Scott's 1982 sci-fi noir classic BLADE RUNNER, will be the movie that Deakins will finally win for.

BLADE RUNNER 2049 reunites Deakins with director Denis Villeneuve, with whom he worked on PRISONERS – another movie he received an Academy Award nomination for. A new featurette, embedded below, gives us a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the film, mixing in a lot of previously unseen footage in the process, and among the cast and crew interviewed for the featurette is Deakins.

During his interview, Deakins says, "I've never worked on a film with so many sets and different lighting patterns. Technically, it's quite challenging." Come on. If our best cinematographer has been challenged on a project, this has to be the one he finally wins the gold for… Yes, I'm sure I'm more invested in the idea of Deakins winning an Academy Award than he is at this point.

Written by Michael Green and Hampton Fancher, who also co-wrote the original BLADE RUNNER, from a story by Fancher and Scott, BLADE RUNNER 2049 has the following synopsis: 

Thirty years after the events of the first film, a new blade runner, LAPD Officer K, unearths a long-buried secret that has the potential to plunge what’s left of society into chaos. K’s discovery leads him on a quest to find Rick Deckard, a former LAPD blade runner who has been missing for 30 years.

The film stars Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Ana de Armas, Jared Leto, Robin Wright, Mackenzie Davis, Dave Bautista, David Dastmalchian, Lennie James, Sylvia Hoeks, Carla Juri, Hiam Abbass, Barkhad Abdi, and Edward James Olmos.

BLADE RUNNER 2049 is scheduled to reach theatres on October 6, 2017.