UPDATE: Who is the protagonist for Ridley Scott's Blade Runner sequel? Plus: Writer announced!

UPDATE: Who is the protagonist for Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner sequel? Plus: Writer announced!

May 17th 2012, 9:49pm

UPDATE: Here’s some extra added excitement– scribe on the original, Hampton Fancher is in talks to write the sequel. Still, no new details other than the fact that the story will be, “some years after the first film concluded”.

There’s no cast yet for the BLADE RUNNER sequel, but the gender of the protagonist has been decided. No real surprise here– it’s a lady.

With my article title, you were probably expecting character details or an actor attached to the project. Nope, Scott hasn’t gotten that far yet. However, it’s exciting to know that there will be another awesome female in the sci-fi world. Here are some of the excerpts. To read the rest of the interview, head on over here.

Daily Beast: This is your first go at sci-fi since Blade Runner in 1982. Why did you finally decide to return to the genre?

Ridley Scott: Funny enough, the reason why I didn’t do sci-fi sooner is I was engaged in other things, and I would’ve always been involved if someone came around and had a good idea. For Prometheus, I came back to a very simple question that haunted me that appears in the first Alien, and no one answered in subsequent Alien films: who was the ”Space Jockey”—the big guy in the seat? If you really go into that, it becomes the basis for a pretty interesting story. When I went to the studio, we didn’t know if it was going to be a sequel or a prequel.

DB: And your next project, after the Cormac McCarthy adaptation, The Counselor, also boasts a strong female lead.

RS: I’m working on a project with Angelina Jolie called Gertrude Bell, which is a very interesting period piece of a woman in the 1900s whose tramping ground was very much part of Mesopotamia, which we now know of as Iraq. She’s involved with a person called King Faisal, and she was partly instrumental in seeing him to the throne of Iraq. She’s an important political figure.

DB: What about the rumored Blade Runner sequel?

RS: Funny enough, I started my first meetings on the Blade Runner sequel last week. We have a very good take on it. And we’ll definitely be featuring a female protagonist.