Once again proving that Hollywood has indeed run out of original ideas and instead is looking to the past to try and generate something at least half-way decent, the production company behind such films as The Blind Side and The Book of Eli has now set its sights on a prequel and sequel to Ridley Scott’s classic 1982 sci-fi film Blade Runner.

The announcement came today from Alcon Entertainment, who are currently negotiating to secure the rights to the Blade Runner franchise from producer-director Bud Yorkin, who currently holds them. If Alcon is successful (and they probably will be) their franchise rights would be all-inclusive, but exclude rights to remake the original. Well, at least that’s something, right? Dodged that bullet.

The company’s co-founders and co-Chief Executive Officers Broderick Johnson and Andrew Kosove are, as you may expect, pretty excited about the prospect of getting their hands on Blade Runner.

“We are honored and excited to be in business with Bud Yorkin. This is a major acquisition for our company, and a personal favorite film for both of us. We recognize the responsibility we have to do justice to the memory of the original with any prequel or sequel we produce. We have long-term goals for the franchise, and are exploring multi-platform concepts, not just limiting ourselves to one medium only.”

Okay, they seem to talk the talk at least. But, of course, this is Hollywood and that could just be fan-service. Which, let’s face it, it probably is. All I can say after hearing about this is thank goodness they can’t do a remake of the original film. At least we will always have that.

Click through if you want to read the full press release.

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It’s been a long time since Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep hit the shelves in 1968 and inspired a generation of Sci-Fi fans. In the novel, Dick imagined a post-apocalyptic world wherein earth and much of its population have been decimated by nuclear fallout after a massive world war.

Most animals were either forced into extinction or are now extremely rare due to the radiation poisoning resulting from this so-called World War Terminus. The book’s plotline follows the protagonist, Rick Deckard as a police bounty hunter, racing through a near-future San Francisco on the trail of six dangerous androids.

Many of us Sci-Fi fanatics know this story intimately from Ridley Scott’s 1982 masterpiece, Blade Runner. Now, almost thirty years later, writer Chris Roberson and artist Robert Adler have imagined a prequel that will be available for the iPad in comic form. Taking place immediately after World War Terminus ends, the problems with artificial life – androids – become apparent.

The government decides they must become targets, hunted down, but who will do the dirty work? Two men are assigned: Malcolm Reed, a ‘special’ human with the power to feel others’ emotions, and Charlie Victor, who’s the perfect man for the job – or is he? Meanwhile Samantha Wu, a Stanford biologist, fights to save the last of the world’s animals.

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Obviously, this week’s big release is Blackest Night #1. To say the least, I’ve been pumped and ready for this series since the end of the Sinestro Corps War. I think you probably got a pretty accurate gage of what it will be like in the pages of last week’s Green Lantern #43, and this new series is likely to be a doozy.

Although, as much as I’m looking forward to Blackest Night, what I’m really massively recommending this week is a personal favorite of mine: Peter Tomasi’s The Light Brigade.  Getting a re-printing, this beautiful book drawn by Peter Snejberg has it all: Angels, Demons, Nazis and a couple of regular Joes protecting the Sword of God.

My other recommendation is the regular Doctor Who series premiering this week. Originally, it was the comics of this TV series that got me into the show. This was before the Sy-Fy channel that would repeat old episodes. Now that Doctor Who its coming back on a regular monthly basis,  I’ll be hopping all over this book.

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