Blade Runner 2049 sure seems like it’s planning to turn the whole Blade Runner mythos on its head. All of the promotional material has been teasing some kind of revelation that’ll change the future world of replicants forever, but we still have no idea what this revelation will be. What we do know is it definitely has something to do with Harrison Ford’s Rick Deckard, who seems to have been in hiding ever since the events of the original film.
As SNL brings its summer Weekend Update to a close, we have our first official Season 43 host. Hide your replicants, as Blade Runner 2049 star and returning guest Ryan Gosling will host the late September premiere, joined by an iconic New York musical guest.
As they often do when a much-beloved film property gets revived after decades spent dormant, fans have had plenty of cause to fret while Blade Runner 2049 has neared its release. Will there be a voiceover? (No.) Will the film definitively answer the question of whether Deckard is a replicant? (Also no.) Will the soundtrack rule? (It certainly seems that way.) And yet so many questions still remain in advance of the film’s wide release. Today will resolve one big one, however, and assuage quite a few fan worries with it.
October hardly qualifies as blockbuster season, but Denis Villeneuve will most likely change that when he unveils the long-murmured-about Blade Runner 2049 on the 6th of that month. He’s bringing all the buzz and gossip-mongering of the summer tentpole frenzy a few months later into the year, and the hype machine has gladly risen to meet him. Empire Magazine, that hallowed bastion of fan-boy and -girl culture, has stoked the flame with a glossy new cover story for Villeneuve’s latest this month, and the denizens of the internet will be pleased to know that they’ve publicized some of their exclusive new photos ahead of time.
Denis Villeneuve’s getting ready to tie a ribbon on Blade Runner 2049. The French filmmaker behind Arrival told Entertainment Weekly that “we are running towards the finishing line right now” on the production due for release October 6, and added that “we are elated. It feels like Christmas as we look at the completed shots.” But directors of generously budgeted studio projects have to say that, nonspecific positivity is pretty much written right into their contracts. Footage, however, cannot lie, and so it’s enticing news indeed that Villeneuve’s little exclusive with EW comes packaged with a new featurette including fresh frames from the hotly anticipated sequel.
The Nice Guys opens with a shot of the Hollywood sign in 1977, dilapidated and covered with graffiti. While modern film nerds look back at that era as a kind of Golden Age, the Los Angeles of The Nice Guys is a place that has lost its luster. The town is swimming in smog and porn; it is literally and metaphorically dirty from top to bottom. The crumbling Hollywood sign is historically accurate, but it also makes a convenient symbol, not just of the place as it was, but as it still is — particularly at this time of year, when everything is based on something else and it sometimes feels like the studios are remaking movies that were just released a few weeks earlier.