Blade Runner 2099: The Future Is Finally Ready for a Series

Some film worlds are built for two hours. Others are so rich, strange and endlessly fascinating that you want to wander around inside them for days. Blade Runner has always belonged in the second category.

Now, more than four decades after Ridley Scott first sent Harrison Ford into the rain-soaked streets of dystopian Los Angeles, the franchise is expanding into television with Blade Runner 2099 an eight-part limited series arriving on Prime Video on 25 November 2026.

And judging by the first trailer, the future remains dark, dangerous and absolutely beautiful.

Set 50 years after the events of Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049, the new series stars Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh as Olwen, a replicant with only days left to live. Hunter Schafer plays Cora, a human fugitive who takes on one final identity in an attempt to stop running: a Blade Runner.

Blade Runners have traditionally hunted replicants. Here, a human Blade Runner is forced to work alongside one. Together, Cora and Olwen must track down a runaway carrying a secret powerful enough to bring their fragile version of Los Angeles crashing down.

According to the official description shared by The Hollywood Reporter, the city has been reborn, “just not by humanity”. It is the kind of ominous, wonderfully loaded line that Blade Runner does better than almost any other franchise.

The trailer also suggests that the uneasy conflict between humans and replicants is about to erupt once again. “The old world forever fights to come back,” Olwen tells Cora. “Humans want what was taken from them. But it’s our time now.”

Welcome to the revolution.

The project has reportedly been in development for five years, with Shining Girls writer Silka Luisa serving as showrunner. Ridley Scott is back as an executive producer, while Jonathan van Tulleken, who directed episodes of Shōgun, will helm the opening two instalments.

Production took place largely at Prague’s Barrandov Studios, with additional filming in Barcelona, according to Variety. The supporting cast includes Dimitri Abold, Lewis Gribben, Matthew Needham, Daniel Rigby, Sheila Atim and Johnny Harris.

Of course, stepping into the world of Blade Runner comes with enormous pressure. Scott’s 1982 original became one of the most influential science-fiction films ever made, while Villeneuve somehow delivered a sequel in 2017 that expanded the world without stripping away its mystery. But television may be exactly what this universe needs.

Blade Runner has never really been about chases, shoot-outs or android detectives. It is about memory, identity, mortality and what it actually means to be human. Eight episodes should give those ideas room to breathe, without losing the atmosphere that made the films so unforgettable.

The future is back. Let’s just hope it keeps raining.