A lot happens between now and 2049. That’s one of the takeaways from yesterday’s “Blade Runner 2049” panel at Comic-Con, where Warner Bros. revealed much of what goes down between the original film (set in 2019 and released in 1982) and the upcoming sequel. Here are some of the key events:
2018: Replicants are declared illegal under penalty of death following a bloody mutiny.
2019: Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) and a prototype Replicant named Rachel abscond from Los Angeles together.
2022: Replicants are blamed for the Blackout, which shuts down cities for weeks, crashes financial markets, and leads to food shortages.
2025: Niander Wallace (Jared Leto) brings an end to the global food crisis.
2030s: Wallace, who now owns the Tyrell Corporation, uses genetic engineering to make Replicants more obedient and easier to control.
Early 2040s: LAPD expands its Blade Runner unit in order to track down illegal Replicants and “retire” them.
That just about brings us up to speed, though more thorough details are available on the Road to 2049 website. Denis Villeneuve — who said he “didn’t want someone else to fuck it up” and called the original “Blade Runner” his “favorite movie of all time — is directing the sequel, which stars Ryan Gosling alongside Ford. The film hits theaters on October 6.
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