Prime Video released the official final trailer for Blade Runner 2099, its new series set in the Blade Runner world, yesterday, and the limited series from Amazon MGM Studios and Alcon Television Group will premiere all 8 episodes at once on November 25. Check out the official post down below:
The series takes place 50 years after the events of Blade Runner 2049. Prime Video's official description reads: "Los Angeles has been reborn, just not by humanity. Cora, a fugitive in a final bid to stop running, takes on one last identity: a Blade Runner. Forced to partner with Olwen, a Replicant days from dying, she hunts down a runaway hiding a truth that could collapse a fragile city."
What The Final Trailer Shows
The trailer runs 2 minutes and 22 seconds and opens on a question that sounds a lot like a Voight-Kampff test: "Are you a good human? Or a bad one?" From there it moves through a Los Angeles built up into huge industrial towers under an orange haze, crowded back rooms, and a lone figure standing in a red wasteland beside a single beam of light.
Hunter Schafer's Cora spends much of the footage in tight, dimly lit spaces, and a man in one crowded back room barks "Keep still!" at someone off-screen. Later, she is told, "You're a new Blade Runner." Michelle Yeoh's Olwen says of the humans around her: "Humans are always the same. Desperate. Volatile."
The trailer ends on the line Prime Video used for its post, "Whatever you can build, you can destroy."
Humans Have Already Lost
Showrunner Silka Luisa explained the setting during the show's New York Comic Con panel. "We are 50 years after 2049, and bad news. The worst has happened. The replicant uprising that has been bubbling up in the films has taken place, and humans have lost," she said. "2099 is taking place at a junction point when one species is ending and a new one is rising."
She also tied the series back to the 1982 film and Roy Batty's fight for more life. "This show asked that same question, but on a macro level. Mankind, what happens when we realize our time is running out?" Luisa said. Olwen is officially hunting human insurgents, but according to Luisa, she is really searching for a missing Blade Runner named Merrick, one of her colleagues.
The Cast And Creative Team
Yeoh, of Everything Everywhere All at Once, and Schafer, of Euphoria, lead the series. Dimitri Abold and Lewis Gribben are series regulars, and the recurring guest stars are Katelyn Rose Downey, Daniel Rigby, Johnny Harris, Amy Lennox, Sheila Atim, Matthew Needham, Tom Burke and Maurizio Lombardi.
Silka Luisa is the showrunner, creator and an executive producer. Ridley Scott, who directed the original 1982 film, is an executive producer, as are Alcon co-founders Andrew Kosove and Broderick Johnson, Alcon's President of Television Ben Roberts, and Steven Johnson, David W. Zucker and Clayton Krueger from Scott Free Productions. Michael Green, Richard Sharkey, Tom Spezialy, Cynthia Yorkin, Frank Giustra, Tim Gamble and Isa Dick Hackett are also executive producers.
Jonathan van Tulleken, who worked on Shōgun, directed the first 2 episodes and is also an executive producer.
From 2049 To 2099
Alcon produced Blade Runner 2049, the Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford sequel that was nominated for 5 Academy Awards and won Best Cinematography and Best Visual Effects. Green's name on the executive producer list also connects the 2 projects, since he was one of the writers on that film. Isa Dick Hackett is the daughter of Philip K. Dick, whose novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was the basis for the original film.
The final trailer follows the first look at the series from New York Comic Con, covered in Blade Runner 2099: Michelle Yeoh & Hunter Schafer Seek Out The Truth In Intriguing New NYCC Trailer. The new footage leans much harder on the partnership between Cora and Olwen, with the mystery of the runaway kept mostly in the background.
Blade Runner 2099 premieres on November 25 in more than 240 countries and territories, only on Prime Video.
Will Blade Runner 2099 live up to the 2 films before it, and are you planning to watch all 8 episodes on day 1?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.