Do streaming services dream of electric sheep? We’re going to find out as Amazon gets the ball rolling on the next installment of the Blade Runner franchise, its upcoming TV series. The new series, Blade Runner 2099, has landed director Jeremy Podeswa as the man who will establish the series’s look and feel by coming on as the director of the first episode and serving as the producing director for the series. He will also be given an executive producer credit, alongside Ridley Scott and Blade Runner 2049 writer Michael Green. Silka Luisa (Shining Girls) will be the showrunner.
Jeremy Podeswa has a long and illustrious career in prestige television, having been nominated for four Emmys and directing a slew of episodes of Game of Thrones, including being trusted with the sixth season premiere and then the seventh season’s premiere and finale. Some might even argue he was the last person to helm a good episode of the series as season 8 crashed and burned into a rushed mess. He’s been a journeyman TV director since the mid ’90s, also directing shows like The Walking Dead, Queer as Folk, Rome, Dexter, and The Handmaid’s Tale. Amazon has got itself a pro here, but he doesn’t quite make you think “visionary” like Ridley Scott and Denis Villeneuve do — and Blade Runner is all about artistic vision.
Blade Runner 2099 is Scott’s latest attempt to turn the sci-fi franchise into something bigger than his seminal 1982 film. While Blade Runner 2049 was a cinematic masterpiece, the audiences didn’t turn up for it, leaving Scott without a studio interested in more sequels. There was 2021’s animated series Blade Runner: Black Lotus, but that didn’t move the needle very much. Now Scott is returning with the live-action Blade Runner 2099 and its new director from Game of Thrones, with the show taking place, as the name suggests, 50 years after 2049. There’s little known about the rest of the plot, but we’ll probably get a new cast of characters in this one and a story that continues on humanity’s struggles with Replicants and just what it is to be human.
