With all the recent Star Wars shenanigans, Ridley Scott's Blade Runner follow-up has rather been swept aside in the news-snippet stakes. Kudos to IGN then, for asking Harrison Ford about Rick Deckard rather than Han Solo, when they caught him on the Ender's Game publicity trail. Is he actually interested in reteaming with Ridley? "We've been chatting about it," he reveals.
Ford's involvement (or non-involvement) has been the subject of much speculation since the project was revealed back in August 2011. Andrew Kosove, of production company Alcon Entertainment, was initially quoted as saying there was practically no chance of Ford showing up ("I think it is quite unlikely").
A few months later, however, a mischievous Scott suggested that, while Deckard isn't intended as the centre of the film (it sounds more like a Prometheus-ish expansion of the mythology), "It would be amusing to have him it somewhere". A few months after that, Scott was musing about how Deckard's having aged might be explained away in the film. "He was a Nexus 6, so we don't know how long he can live," he chuckled. Since Ford was never an adherent of the Deckard's-a-replicant school of thought, you might think that would be a sticking point.
The assumption about Ford's reluctance to attend, however, has always been based on his much-reported ambivalence towards the original, and his fractious on-set relationship with his director. His appearance on the lengthy Final Cut DVD documentary suggested that those wounds have healed though, and he now tells IGN: "I remember it with complication, but I'm not there to generate nostalgic moments, I'm there to do a job of work. I quite understand that everybody has an ambition when they come and do a film, and everyone's ambition may not be focused on the same thing. I truly admire Ridley as a man and as a director, and I would be very happy to engage with him again in the further telling of this story."
As for the infamous voiceover, excised from all versions subsequent to the Theatrical Cut, Ford, of course, says, "That was a big part of the issue. I don't think it was necessary... and Ridley didn't think it was necessary. That was something that came up from the studio." So if the new film required narration? "I'm now capable of losing my voice: cutting out my tonsils and my vocal chords!"
Blade Runner 2 - or whatever it ends up being called - is a long way off yet. Last we heard, Michael Green (Green Lantern) was at work on the screenplay, following an initial draft by original Blade Runner writer Hampton Fancher. Watch this space for developments.