'Blade Runner' Sequel To Be Shot By Roger Deakins

Alicon Entertainment's sequel to Blade Runner will have Roger Deakins helming the cinematography. Deakins joins director Denis Villeneuve on this project after previously working with him on Alcon's Prisoners and Sicario, starring Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin and Benicio Del Toro, which is in competition at Cannes.

Deakins will be presented with the Pierre Angénieux Excellens in Cinematography Award at the Cannes Film Festival on May 22. Deakins received his latest Academy Award nomination this year for his work on Angelina Jolie's Unbroken. He was previously nominated for The Man Who Wasn't There, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, No Country for Old Men, True Grit, The Shawshank Redemption, Kundun, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, The Reader, Prisoners and Skyfall.

The sequel to Blade Runner is expected to start principal photography in the summer of 2016. Hampton Fancher (co-writer of the original) and Michael Green have written the original screenplay based on an idea by Fancher and Ridley Scott, set several decades after the conclusion of the 1982 original.

The film has Harrison Ford reprising his role as Rock Deckard.

Alcon Entertainment acquired the film, television and ancillary franchise rights to Blade Runner in 2011 from producer Bud Yorkin to produce prequels and sequels. Yorkin will serve as a producer on the sequel along with Alcon's Andrew Kosove and Broderick Johnson. Cynthia Sikes Yorkin will also produce.

Ridley Scott directed Blade Runner — set in Los Angeles in 2019 — from a screenplay by Fancher and David Peeples. Jordan Scott Cronenweth was the cinematographer. Deakins is repped by ICM Partners.

Deakins has proven to be a forward-thinking technologist as well, adopting digital color timing well ahead of his contemporaries, and making the jump to shooting with digital cameras seamlessly without sacrificing beauty or image quality.

The film won't start shooting until the summer of 2016 so let's wait and watch to see how it all comes together.