On Saturday, December 2, 2017, New York WinterCon in Queens, NY hosted a Blade Runner 35th Anniversary Reunion Panel featuring many of the cast members of the original Blade Runner film. Present at the con and panel were Rutger Hauer (Roy Batty), Sean Young (Rachael), William Sanderson (J.F. Sebastian), Joanna Cassidy (Zhora), and Kevin Thompson (Napoleon Bear).
Because NYWintercon set up their main stage in the middle of the convention floor, all of the noise taking place at the convention surrounds the stage, and so the audio can be tough to hear at times. Below are two videos of this panel. The first video has a better visual presentation. While the second video has a slightly better audio presentation. Take your pick.
Also at NYWintercon was Scott Pettersen. He is a freelance sculptor and painter. He is best known for his portrait sculptures, 1/6 limited art figures, and resin kits.
Some of the cast of Blade Runner posed with Scott Pettersen's figures of themselves at NY Wintercon 2017. He was happy to hear they all really liked the figures and were willing to take these great pics with them. Thanks to Frank Patz for the "precious photos"!
Welcome to another edition of the OFF-WORLD NEWS Digest.
In the news ...
Blade Runner 2049 Director Is Still Wrapping His Head Around Why It Underperformed. -- Blade Runner 2049 was a critical darling, getting a largely raving reception, but audiences didn’t seem to reciprocate. The movie had lackluster success, failing to bring in little more than half its budget domestically. And while it’s done better overseas, director Denis Villeneuve is struggling to understand why the movie was such a box office disappointment—though it could be history repeating itself. As Villeneuve said in a recent interview, "Because the first movie had the same fate. The original Blade Runner when it came out wasn’t a success, and through time became was it is today." More HERE.
Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049: masterpiece or flop? -- The Quebec director plays it cool in the face of the sequel's disappointing box office: “My job is to make movies, not sell movies.” More HERE.
“Blade Runner 2049” Could Lose Studio $80M -- Despite the critical acclaim, Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 notably underwhelmed at the box-office with an opening soft enough that theatrical exhibition stocks plummeted. Since then there’s been much debate about potential causes for the film’s failure from its long runtime, its marketing approach which played things very vague, and just the general opinion of the Blade Runner franchise which has always been a niche movie embraced by cinephiles as opposed to the public at large. Now, THR reports that Alcon Entertainment and the investors who put their money into the movie are set to lose as much as $80 million on the film. The project had a production budget of $155 million before marketing, which means it needed to earn $400 million worldwide to break even. At present, it stands at just over $240 million in box-office revenue. More HERE.
Alternate Studio Logo Treatment For Blade Runner 2049 Revealed -- Every movie starts with a handful of distributor and producer logos, and most of the time, they give you a few extra seconds to get comfortable before the film actually starts. However, every now and then filmmakers use that corporate branding as one more element to pull viewers into the world of their movie. And Denis Villeneuve accomplished that very thing with Blade Runner 2049. More HERE.
Blade Runner 2049 + Territory -- Tapped to create screen graphics for the sequel to Ridley Scott’s iconic film, Territory joined the art department in the very early stages of production. Website link HERE.
Blade Runner 2049 + Weta Workshop -- For Denis Villeneuve’s critically acclaimed follow-up to the 1982 cult classic, Weta Workshop was honoured to provide practical miniatures, selected cinematography, and concept design work. Retaining the physicality that made the original Blade Runner an iconic work of sci-fi cinema, the Weta Workshop crew hand-made enormous miniature sets which were then filmed by legendary cinematographer Alex Funke. In the Design Studio, the Workshop’s team of conceptual designers helped give shape to the director’s vision. Website link HERE.
Blade Runner: 2049 director reveals why he wanted to cast David Bowie -- Dennis Villeneuve had originally intended to cast Bowie in the role of villainous replicant creator Niander Wallace, before the role eventually went to Jared Leto after his death in January 2016. Now, he’s opened up on the original plan to secure Bowie for the film, and described how his otherworldly spirit made him perfect for the role. More HERE.
How Alcon Entertainment Hand-Delivered ‘Blade Runner 2049’ To Make A Dying Man’s Day -- "It’s easy to think of movie studios as vastly impersonal conglomerates, and all companies as quasi-automated entities incapable of making concessions to human dignity. Press four to speak to human. Even in this case, that was 95 percent of my experience — before I found Steve" [Steve Wegner at Alcon Entertainment, who had co-produced Blade Runner 2049]. Link to the article is HERE.
One Big Difference Between Making Blade Runner 2049 And Dune, According To Denis Villeneuve -- Few modern directors have a track record of high quality quite like Denis Villeneuve. Following his work on films like 2013's Prisoners, 2015's Sicario, last year's Arrival, and this year's release of Blade Runner 2049, he has proven that he can do great work in almost any universe. The next job on his plate is his remake of Dune, and according to Villeneuve, working in that world is notably different from Blade Runner because he has more of an opportunity to make it his own. More HERE.
Denis Villeneuve Responds to Criticism of ‘Blade Runner 2049’s Female Characters: ‘The World Is Not Kind on Women’ -- “I am very sensitive to how I portray women in movies. This is my ninth feature film and six of them have women in the lead role,” he says in a Vanity Fair interview. Among those are “Arrival,” which stars Amy Adams, and “Sicario,” with Emily Blunt in the lead. More HERE.
Denis Villeneuve On His Love Of Sci-Fi, Working With Ridley Scott On ‘Blade Runner 2049’ & Revisiting ‘Dune’ – Behind The Lens -- Article HERE.
Now for some articles, art, videos, podcasts, and some music!
If anyone has comments, feedback, or questions, please feel free to post them in the Comment section below. And if you'd like to contribute, or recommend Blade Runner-related art, music, video, podcast, or article, you may do so at Kipple@KippleZone.com.
And remember to follow @OffWorldNews on Twitter to receive these and other Blade Runner related news items, (including movie showings, specials, and more not featured in this newsletter), as it comes in.
And be sure to visit KippleZone's Pinterest page for more Blade Runner images, and videos; from behind-the-scenes photos to fan art, figures, and props!
Welcome to another edition of the OFF-WORLD NEWS Digest.
In the news ...
It's the twentieth anniversary of the Westwood Studio's PC game, Blade Runner. Released in 1997, the game was advertised as "the first real-time adventure game". The story featured "Blade Runner" Ray McCoy searching for Replicants in Los Angeles in the year 2019.
'Blade Runner 2049' bombs in China. The Sony/Alcon Entertainment production, which has earned just under $200 million worldwide ($77m of that in North America courtesy of Warner Bros./Time Warner Inc.), bombed in its first day of release in the second-biggest moviegoing market in the world. The $150m+ sci-fi sequel, which debuted to rave reviews but indifferent box office earlier this month, earned just $2.4m on Friday. That means, offhand, that we’re looking at a $7m-$8m weekend and $15m-$20m total in China. More HERE.
Blade Runner 2049 was originally 4 hours long? More HERE and HERE.
Now for some articles, art, videos, podcasts, music, and some miscellaneous!
In this exclusive video profile is featured the sound team behind Director Denis Villeneuve's, Blade Runner 2049 featuring supervising sound editor Mark Mangini, sound designer Theo Green, re-recording mixer Doug Hemphill and Ron Bartlett, picture editor Joe Walker and Composer Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfisch.
Podcasts:
Music:
Miscellaneous:
One of Adam Savage's favorite purchases at New York Comic Con
Deckard’s Dream -- an 8-voice polyphonic analogue synthesizer inspired by a certain cinematic sound from the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Kojima Dreams of 'Blade Runner' -- The original 'Blade Runner' deeply impacted the game designer and directly inspired his game 'Snatcher'
And remember to follow @OffWorldNews on Twitter to receive these and other Blade Runner related news items, (including movie showings, specials, and more not featured in this newsletter), as it comes in. And be sure to visit KippleZone's Pinterest page for more Blade Runner images and videos; from behind-the-scenes photos to fan art, figures, and props!
Welcome to another edition of the OFF-WORLD NEWS Digest.
In the news ...
Sony Pictures is receiving backlash for releasing a self-censored cut of Denis Villeneuve’s “Blade Runner 2049” in Turkey. The studio allegedly removed all nudity from the movie. But the studio’s decision to self-censor the film based on what it believed to be respectful to Turkish culture has upset the country’s film community. More HERE.
The tie-in VR experience Blade Runner 2049: Memory Lab puts the player in the role of a replicant who is having their memories examined. In the world of Blade Runner, replicants have implanted memories, the nature of which are strictly controlled by the companies that create them. In Blade Runner 2049: Memory Lab, however, something has gone awry in the player’s memories, leading to the uncovering of a dark conspiracy. Blade Runner 2049: Memory Lab will be available for Oculus Rift on 19th October, and Samsung Gear VR on 26th October, 2017.
Jared Leto performed the part of Niander Wallace. This character is a genius inventor and entrepreneur, a blind man with the vision to save humankind who then looks past humanity to invent a new kind of replicant, the android line that once nearly destroyed humanity. Wallace is ruthless in the pursuit of technology he claims is crucial to mankind’s future, rendering himself both potential savior and antagonist. Leto, in addition to a working actor and musician, is also a prominent tech investor, and was thus prone to feeling empathy for the character.
"I don’t think he’s really that bad a guy," the 45-year-old Oscar winner told SYFY WIRE. "He's ruthless, he's ambitious, he's determined, he's highly intelligent, he's really powerful. So you can look at the titans of industry, from Dale Carnegie to the Rockefellers to Steve Jobs to the Dalai Lama. He does have this spiritual sense to him. He clearly has an opinion, an idea of what needs to be done in order to save humanity. He's not afraid to take the steps that are necessary in order to make his vision come to life." More HERE.
As Blade Runner 2049 opened in theaters, Visual Effects Hall of Fame Inductees were honored, including alums from the original 1982 film Blade Runner; concept artist Syd Mead, VFX supervisor Douglas Trumbull, and the late matte painter Matthew Yuricich. More HERE.
“Blade Runner 2049” may have topped the box office this weekend, but the numbers weren’t convincing. Despite playing on over 4000 screens in North America, the film could only manage $31 million in ticket sales, a rather disappointing return for a movie that cost $150 million. The returns are even harder to accept given the nearly unanimous praise for Denis Villeneuve‘s bold and unique sci-fi film, and the studio admits they were slightly surprised by how things shook out. More HERE.
Warner Bros.’ marketing for the film has been one of the key reasons people think the film missed the mark at the box office. Trailers and clips for the movie kept all plot specifics hidden out of fear of spoilers (Warner Bros. had said that even just saying the plot of the film would count as a spoiler), which ended up failing to create interest among the key demographic of non-“Blade Runner” fans. According to PostTrack, 65% of the film’s audience was made up of males and a whopping 77% was moviegoers over the age of 25, meaning the film failed to breakout of its core fan base. Villeneuve supports Warner Bros.’ decision, however, and he ultimately requested the movie not be screened at any fall film festivals so that spoilers could be preserved. Villeneuve even requested for K’s identity as a replicant or a human to be left out of all reviews. More HERE.
This week, most of the talk surrounding “Blade Runner 2049” has been about its disappointing box office returns, raising questions about its marketing strategy, and the impact it might’ve had on the final numbers. Lost in the discussion has been the film’s artistry. No matter where you might stand on the movie, Denis Villeneuve‘s film looks magnificent, and that’s thanks to the outstanding work by Roger Deakins. There is already Oscar chatter brewing for the cinematographer’s exceptional efforts on the picture, but if you to experience it as he intended, you’ll have to put those 3D glasses down. “We shot the film in 2D and in a widescreen format,” Deakins wrote in the forums of his website, “…I oversaw the timing of all the versions of ‘BR2049’ including the HDR version. | My preferred version is the standard 2D widescreen version. A problem I have with some viewing systems is their use of silvered screens. The image projected on a silvered screen lacks saturation as well as density as it falls off from a hot spot in the center of vision,” he added. More HERE.
There has been an enormous amount of articles, podcasts, and reviews on Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049 since the release of BR2049, from all over the world. Below are just a sample of what I've come across -- mostly in English.
Now for some articles, art, videos, podcasts, music, and some miscellaneous!
And remember to follow @OffWorldNews on Twitter to receive these and other Blade Runner related news items, (including movie showings, specials, and more not featured in this newsletter), as it comes in. And be sure to visit KippleZone's Pinterest page for more Blade Runner images and videos; from behind-the-scenes photos to fan art, figures, and props!
