Pre-production and script (
Burbank, California) Interest in adapting
Philip K. Dick's novel
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? developed shortly after its 1968 publication. Director
Martin Scorsese was interested in filming the novel, but never
optioned it. Producer
Herb Jaffe optioned it in the early 1970s, but Dick was unimpressed with the screenplay written by Herb's son
Robert, saying, "Jaffe's screenplay was so terribly done ... Robert flew down to Santa Ana to speak with me about the project. And the first thing I said to him when he got off the plane was, 'Shall I beat you up here at the airport, or shall I beat you up back at my apartment? The screenplay by
Hampton Fancher was optioned in 1977. Producer
Michael Deeley became interested in Fancher's draft and convinced director Ridley Scott to film it. Scott had previously declined the project but, after leaving the slow production of
Dune, wanted a faster-paced project to take his mind off his older brother's recent death. He joined the project on February 21, 1980, and managed to push up the promised
Filmways financing from US$13 million to $15 million. Fancher's script focused more on environmental issues and less on issues of humanity and religion, which are prominent in the novel, and Scott wanted changes. Fancher found a cinema treatment by
William S. Burroughs for
Alan E. Nourse's novel
The Bladerunner (1974), titled
Blade Runner (a movie). Scott liked the name, so Deeley obtained the rights to the titles. Dick publicly expressed distaste with Fancher's early screenplay in the LA press, calling the result a "terrible script. Corny, extremely maladroit throughout". He complained that it "overrelied on the old cliché-ridden
Chandleresque figure" and that Fancher had "concentrated on a lurid collision between human and android. The whole skein of the book had been simplified into a 'you or me' type of thing; only one of us, this human or an android, will survive". Peoples later suggested that his contributions were oversold, stating that Scott's "ideas and thrust were the motive force of the film" and noting that Scott was "totally involved on every level of scripting." Having invested more than $2.5 million in pre-production, as the date of commencement of principal photography neared, Filmways withdrew financial backing. In ten days Deeley had secured $21.5 million in financing through a three-way deal between
the Ladd Company (through Warner Bros.), the Hong Kong-based producer
Sir Run Run Shaw and
Tandem Productions.
Casting Casting the film proved troublesome, particularly for the lead role of Deckard. Screenwriter Hampton Fancher envisioned
Robert Mitchum as Deckard and wrote the character's dialogue with Mitchum in mind. According to production documents, several actors were considered for the role, including
Gene Hackman,
Sean Connery,
Jack Nicholson,
Paul Newman,
Clint Eastwood,
Tommy Lee Jones,
Arnold Schwarzenegger,
Peter Falk,
Nick Nolte,
Al Pacino and
Burt Reynolds. Director Ridley Scott and the film's producers spent months meeting and discussing the role with
Dustin Hoffman, who eventually departed over differences in vision. the violent yet thoughtful leader of the replicants. Scott cast Hauer without having met him, based on his performances in
Paul Verhoeven's movies that Scott had seen (
Katie Tippel,
Soldier of Orange, and
Turkish Delight).
Blade Runner used a number of then-lesser-known actors:
Sean Young portrays Rachael, an experimental replicant implanted with the memories of Tyrell's niece, causing her to believe she is human;
Nina Axelrod auditioned for the role.
Daryl Hannah portrays Pris, a "basic pleasure model" replicant;
Stacey Nelkin auditioned for the role, but was given another part in the film, which was ultimately cut before filming. Casting Pris and Rachael was challenging, requiring several screen tests with
Morgan Paull playing the role of Deckard. Paull was cast as Deckard's fellow bounty hunter Holden based on his performances in the tests.
James Hong portrays Hannibal Chew, an elderly geneticist specializing in synthetic eyes, and
Hy Pyke portrayed the sleazy bar owner Taffey Lewis – in a single take, something almost unheard-of with Scott, whose drive for perfection resulted at times in double-digit takes.
Production Principal photography of
Blade Runner began on March 9, 1981, and ended four months later. The
Bradbury Building in downtown Los Angeles served as a
filming location, and a Warner Bros.
backlot housed the 2019 Los Angeles street
sets. Other locations included the
Ennis-Brown House and the
2nd Street Tunnel.
Test screenings resulted in several changes, including adding a
voice-over, a happy ending, and the removal of a Holden hospital scene. The relationship between the filmmakers and the investors was difficult, which culminated in Deeley and Scott being fired but still working on the film. in Los Angeles was used as one of the filming locations. In 1992, Ford revealed, "
Blade Runner is not one of my favorite films. I tangled with Ridley." Apart from friction with the director, Ford also disliked the
voiceovers: "When we started shooting it had been tacitly agreed that the version of the film that we had agreed upon was the version without voiceover narration. It was a nightmare. I thought that the film had worked without the narration. But now I was stuck re-creating that narration. And I was obliged to do the voiceovers for people that did not represent the director's interests." "I went kicking and screaming to the studio to record it." The narration monologs were written by an uncredited
Roland Kibbee. Previous rejected iterations were written by
Hampton Fancher,
David Peoples and
Darryl Ponicsan. In 2006, Scott was asked "Who's the biggest pain in the arse you've ever worked with?" He replied: "It's got to be Harrison ... he'll forgive me because now I get on with him. Now he's become charming. But he knows a lot, that's the problem. When we worked together it was my first film up and I was the new kid on the block. But we made a good movie." Ford said of Scott in 2000: "I admire his work. We had a bad patch there, and I'm over it." In 2006 Ford reflected on the production of the film saying: "What I remember more than anything else when I see
Blade Runner is not the 50 nights of shooting in the rain, but the voiceover ... I was still obliged to work for these clowns that came in writing one bad voiceover after another." Ridley Scott confirmed in the summer 2007 issue of
Total Film that Harrison Ford contributed to the
Blade Runner Special Edition DVD, and had already recorded his interviews. "Harrison's fully on board", said Scott. Although Dick died shortly before the film's release, he was pleased with a 20-minute special effects test reel that was screened for him when he was invited to the studio. Despite his well-known skepticism of Hollywood in principle, Dick enthused to Scott that the world created for the film looked exactly as he had imagined it. He said, "I saw a segment of
Douglas Trumbull's special effects for
Blade Runner on the
KNBC news. I recognized it immediately. It was my own interior world. They caught it perfectly." He also approved of the film's final script, saying: "After I finished reading the screenplay, I got the novel out and looked through it. The two reinforce each other so that someone who started with the novel would enjoy the movie and someone who started with the movie would enjoy the novel." The motion picture was dedicated to Dick.
Design Scott credits
Edward Hopper's painting
Nighthawks and the French science fiction comics magazine
Métal Hurlant, to which the artist
Jean "Moebius" Giraud contributed, as stylistic mood sources. He also drew on the landscape of "
Hong Kong on a very bad day" and the industrial landscape of his one-time home in northeast England. The visual style of the movie is influenced by the work of futurist Italian architect
Antonio Sant'Elia. Scott hired
Syd Mead as his
concept artist; like Scott, he was influenced by
Métal Hurlant. Moebius was offered the opportunity to assist in the pre-production of
Blade Runner, but he declined so that he could work on
René Laloux's animated film
Les Maîtres du temps – a decision that he later regretted. Production designer
Lawrence G. Paull and art director
David Snyder realized Scott's and Mead's sketches.
Douglas Trumbull and
Richard Yuricich supervised the special effects for the film, and
Mark Stetson served as chief model maker.
Blade Runner has numerous similarities to
Fritz Lang's
Metropolis, including a built-up urban environment, in which the wealthy literally live above the workers, dominated by a huge building – the Stadtkrone Tower in
Metropolis and the Tyrell Building in
Blade Runner. Special effects supervisor David Dryer used stills from
Metropolis when lining up
Blade Runners miniature building shots. The extended end scene in the original theatrical release shows Rachael and Deckard traveling into daylight with pastoral aerial shots filmed by director
Stanley Kubrick. Ridley Scott contacted Kubrick about using some of his surplus helicopter aerial photography from
The Shining.
Spinner in the 1990s "Spinner" is the generic term for the fictional flying cars used in the film. A spinner can be driven as a ground-based vehicle, and take off vertically, hover, and cruise much like
vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft. They are used extensively by the police as
patrol cars, and wealthy people can also acquire spinner licenses. The vehicle was conceived and designed by Syd Mead who described the spinner as an
aerodyne – a vehicle which directs air downward to create
lift, though press kits for the film stated that the spinner was propelled by three engines: "conventional
internal combustion,
jet, and
anti-gravity". A spinner is on permanent exhibit at the
Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in Seattle, Washington. Mead's conceptual drawings were transformed into 25 vehicles by automobile customizer
Gene Winfield; at least two were working ground vehicles, while others were lightweight mockups for crane shots and set decoration for street shots. Two of them ended up at
Disney World in Orlando, Florida, but were later destroyed, and a few others remain in private collections.
Music The
Blade Runner soundtrack by
Vangelis is a dark melodic combination of classic composition and futuristic synthesizers which mirrors the film noir retro-future envisioned by Scott. Vangelis, fresh from his
Academy Award-winning score for
Chariots of Fire, composed and performed the music on his synthesizers. He also made use of various chimes and the vocals of collaborator
Demis Roussos. Another memorable sound is the tenor sax solo "Love Theme" by British saxophonist
Dick Morrissey, who performed on many of Vangelis's albums. Ridley Scott also used "Memories of Green" from the Vangelis album
See You Later, an orchestral version of which Scott would later use in his film
Someone to Watch Over Me. Along with Vangelis's compositions and ambient textures, the film's soundscape also features a track by the Japanese ensemble Nipponia – "Ogi no Mato" or "The Folding Fan as a Target" from the Nonesuch Records release
Traditional Vocal and Instrumental Music – and a track by harpist
Gail Laughton from "Harps of the Ancient Temples" on Laurel Records. Despite being well received by fans and critically acclaimed and nominated in 1982 for
a BAFTA and
a Golden Globe as best original score, and the promise of a soundtrack album from
Polydor Records in the end titles of the film, the release of the official soundtrack recording was delayed for over a decade. There are two official releases of the music from
Blade Runner. In light of the lack of a release of an album, the
New American Orchestra recorded an orchestral adaptation in 1982 which bore little resemblance to the original. Some of the film tracks would, in 1989, surface on the compilation
Vangelis: Themes, but not until the 1992 release of the ''Director's Cut'' version would a substantial amount of the film's score see commercial release. These delays and poor reproductions led to the production of many
bootleg recordings over the years. A bootleg tape surfaced in 1982 at science fiction conventions and became popular given the delay of an official release of the original recordings, and in 1993 "Off World Music, Ltd" created a bootleg CD that would prove more comprehensive than Vangelis' official CD in 1994. A set with three CDs of
Blade Runner-related Vangelis music was released in 2007. Titled
Blade Runner Trilogy, the first disc contains the same tracks as the 1994 official soundtrack release, the second features previously unreleased music from the film, and the third disc is all newly composed music from Vangelis, inspired by, and in the spirit of the film.
Special effects The film's special effects are generally recognized to be among the best in the genre, using the available (non-digital) technology to the fullest. Special effects engineers who worked on the film are often praised for the innovative technology they used to produce and design certain aspects of those visuals. == Release ==