Michelle Yeoh will lead Blade Runner 2099
Michelle Yeoh will star in Prime Video's miniseries sequel to Blade Runner 2049
Aux News Blade Runner
Michelle Yeoh continues her post-Oscar hot streak landing the lead of Blade Runner 2099, the Prime Video sequel series to Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 (which was a sequel to Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner). That’s basically all we know about the show so far, besides the fact that Scott is producing, Silka Luisa (Shining Girls, Halo) is showrunning, and Jonathan van Tulleken (Shōgun) is directing the first two episodes, per Deadline. Oh, and production recently began in Prague. Otherwise, whatever is happening 50 years in the future of the Blade Runner universe remains a mystery—for now.
We’ve noted before that it’s a little ironic for Amazon Prime Video to be tackling a Blade Runner spin-off, given the series’ themes of capitalist dystopia under a giant, oppressive corporation. But Prime Video is in the business of Philip K. Dick adaptations (Blade Runner is based on his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?). The streamer hosts both The Man In The High Castle and the anthology series Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams (the latter was a co-production with Channel 4 in the UK). The giant, oppressive corporation has also produced a surprising amount of anticapitalist content: The Boys, I’m A Virgo, and Fallout all present political viewpoints that can easily be projected onto Amazon’s infamously exploitative business practices. Of course, producing popular television series is probably helping, rather than hurting, Amazon’s bottom line, so it’s not remotely an act of valor. Still, it’s interesting to note.
Anyway, onto a figure in this story you can actually root for—Michelle Yeoh, whose star turn in Everything Everywhere All At Once finally put the spotlight on what an incredible physical and dramatic actor she is. Recently, she’s appeared in the canceled-after-one-season series American Born Chinese and The Brothers Sun. But her upcoming schedule is chock-full of A-list projects, including Wicked, the Star Trek: Discovery spin-off film Star Trek: Section 31, several Avatar sequels, and of course, Blade Runner 2099.
15 Comments
My favorite Blade Runner-associated work is the Alan E. Nourse novel The Bladerunner, which inspired the William S. Burroughs film treatment/novella Blade Runner: a Movie, which inspired the actual movie’s title.
I got an Electric Sheep notification for this?j/k obviously I’m excited about this.
I really like BR2049, and Michelle Yeoh is exciting. Amazon’s output is pretty hit and miss, though. And the showrunner being from Halo (I’m not familiar with Shining Girls) is not promising.
What network/streamer/studio’s content isn’t hit it miss?Sturgeon’s law has not been repealed.
True, but some are better than others. Apple TV’s overall batting average is a fair bit higher than Amazon, particularly with SF/F shows. Even the ones that aren’t great like Monarch are still pretty watchable. It helps, I guess, that they seem to be heavy on original series and that they don’t put out as many shows, so there isn’t any real big misses like Wheel of Time or Rings of Power. (And honestly, those shows aren’t terrible, but given that they come from beloved source material and that they had big budgets, they’re fairly disappointing.)
“Hello Tomorrow!” (Apple’s retro-1950s future-set series vaguely akin to Fallout) was kind of a miss. Maybe not a big one because no prior IP was involved.
I’m happy we’re getting this and all—I loved BR2049—but by the same token I can’t help but wonder what’s the rationale here. A sequel TV series to an underperforming movie that was itself a sequel to an underperforming movie. What dark magic got worked to have this greenlit?
Amazon sacrifices more money on the nerd altar. Any nerd altar.
The first may have been underperformed in theaters in 1982 but I’m sure it’s made plenty of money since. There’s a huge following even if 2049 wasn’t as successful as they hoped. Streaming series play by different rules anyway.
Influential nerds, who will use company money to make stuff that they want to see. Even if the business case for it is shaky at best.
BR2049 may have underperformed but it still made $80-100M over its budget.Don’t see why there is any confusion here.
I’ll check this out because I LOVE Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049, but I have to admit that while Yeoh doesn’t hurt, she also doesn’t make this any more compelling to me. In the late ‘90s when I was in college, I ate up Michelle Yeoh/Khan’s HK action movies, but looking at her post-Supercop filmography, I’m realizing myself a little unimpressed. She was good in Crazy Rich Asians and EEAAO, and fantastic in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but I think that’s about it for me.
Not a fan of Tomorrow Never Dies?
What the shock!
A capitalist dystopia sounds a lot more appealing than a communist dystopia. Discuss.