Ana De Armas, the Knock Knock star will be joining Ryan Gosling, Robin Wright, Harrison Ford and Dave Bautista in the upcoming Blade Runner sequel. Alcon Entertainment’s co-founder and co-CEOs Andrew Kosove and Broderick Johnson announced it. Ana De Armas will be playing a lead role in the film and it has Denis Villeneuve directing it as well.
The principal photography process has been scheduled to begin from July 2016. This film will be released by Warner Bros. in North America and Sony Pictures will release it internationally and will further distribute it in all media across all overseas territories. Ana De Armas, the Cuban born actress began her career in Spanish language film and television in Cuba, and then later it was Spain.
She will be in two major films scheduled to be released in August. This includes Weinstein Company’s Hands of Stone, a boxing biopic and she will be appearing alongside Robert De Niro and Edgar Ramirez. She will also star in Warner Bros. comedic drama named War Dogs, along with actors Jonah Hill and Miles Teller.
“We think Ana is one of the most exciting, up-and-coming international actors in the world today,” said Johnson and Kosove, “and we are thrilled she will be playing such an important part in this sequel.” Harrison Ford will reprise his iconic role as Rick Deckard and this sequel is actually set several decades after the original film of 1982. Hampton Fancher and Michael Green wrote the film and this comes as a successive part of the Fancher and David Peoples based on Philip K. Dick’s novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.”
Meanwhile, full story details are yet to be revealed. Roger Deakins, the multi-Oscar nominated cinematographer will reunite with Villeneuve with this project. The film, television and ancillary rights of Blade Runner were acquired by Alcon Entertainment back in 2011, from the late producer Bud Yorkin and Cynthia Sikes Yorkin. This was done so that, in future they can product sequels and prequels to the iconic science-fiction thriller.
In the meantime, Cynthia Sikes will be producing along with Kosove and Johnson. Producer credit will be received by Bud Yorkin. The CEOs of Thunderbird films, Frank Giustra and Tim Gamble will be the executive producers and Ridley Scott will also be in that team along with Bill Carraro.
The film was previously slated for a January 2017 release which is a kind of cinematic tundra on the cinematic calendar and it feels like settling after the hysteria over Christmas blockbusters and Oscar contenders have died down.
This is actually the time when studios will start releasing the projects that they have silently lost confidence in. This includes low-grade action thrillers which either star Nicolas Cage or funnily enough, wanted Nicolas Cage to star. However, now Denis Villeneuve’s sequel to Ridley Scott’s classic 1982 sci-fi, Blade Runner 2 has been bumped up to a much sweeter spot on 6th October 2017.
It is actually occupying the slot that was recently held by the Andy Serkis-directed The Jungle Book: Origins but the film has now been delayed. It is not too hard to understand that this is probably because of the resounding success experienced by The Jungle Book which was released recently.
In other news, Warner Bros. and Alcon Entertainment decided to move up the release date of Blade Runner by three months. The release date has now been scheduled to 6th October, 2017. This film was originally slated for a release 12th January, 2018.