“Blade Runner 2099” Aesthetic Goes Retro

“Furiosa” actor Tom Burke says that Amazon’s new “Blade Runner 2099” television series will be more like Ridley Scott’s original 1982 film (set in the then future 2019) than Denis Villeneuve’s 2017 sequel “Blade Runner 2049”.

Silka Luisa serves as showrunner on the live-action series which wrapped production in December 2024 with a premiere date not yet set. Burke stars in the show alongside Michelle Yeoh and Hunter Schafer.

Speaking with Variety, Burke says the series is “much closer to the aesthetic of” Scott’s film and returns to the “somewhat kind of Baroque, eclectic mix of cultures and time periods”.

There’s a dirty, almost hodge-podge style to the world of Scott’s film which blended various cultural influences and a noir sensibility, whereas Villeneuve’s portrayal offered a somewhat cleaner city – a foggy colored landscape lacking the more on-the-ground culture along with the grimy, soggy, often oppressive darkness of its predecessor.

Burke continued saying the aesthetic is also key to the new show’s story:

“It’s a lot to do with that thing quite intrinsic to the source material in the movie, which is actually what makes somebody human and what makes somebody not human. Or when does somebody cross some threshold? Can we really have a full sense of humanity without being very aware of our own dual sides?

We all have the capacity for great evil as well as great good. I suppose every genre does that to some extent, but I do feel that the morality, that whole kind of thing is handled so well in the Blade Runner world, to me. It’s got subtleties and nuances to it that I don’t think necessarily all sci-fi always has.”

Schafer plays a replicant named Cora who has lived her entire life on the run – adopting numerous identities in the process. To secure a stable future for her brother, she assumes one final identity and is forced to partner with a Blade Runner named Olwen (Yeoh) confronting the end of her life.

The pair become caught up in a widening conspiracy that poses an existential threat to a city that’s fighting to be reborn. “Shōgun” director Jonathan van Tulleken executive produces and directs the first two episodes, while Sir Ridley Scott executive produces.

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