Blade Runner web based series: TV series to follow?

05 June 2009

John Howell

There’s been no word on the sequel we reported a couple of months back, but just when we thought there was nothing left to say about Blade Runner, director Ridley Scott announces a new Blade Runner web based series that will be released under a Creative Commons license.

According to the New York Times, Ridley Scott’s science fiction classic Blade Runner starring Harrison Ford as the replicant hunter in a dystopian Los Angeles will be the basis of a new web based series that may be developed for television later. The series will be set before 2019, when the original Blade Runner movie is set.

Scott announced that his commercials company, RSA Films, was working on the Blade Runner series, which is to be called Purefold. The project is being developed by Ridley Scott, his brother Tony and his son Luke, with the independent studio Ag8.

Unfortunately the creators of the new series do not have the rights to Philip K. Dick’s original story Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, so Purefold will instead be based on the strong “themes” that run through the movie.

“We don’t take any of the canon or copyrighted assets from the movie,” said David Bausola, founding partner of Ag8.

“It’s actually based on the same themes as Blade Runner,” he said. “It’s the search for what it means to be human and understanding the notion of empathy. We are inspired by Blade Runner.”

What makes the series unique is that it will be released under a Creative Commons license, the first time a major Hollywood director has embraced this licensing scheme. Fans of the series could take the episodes and remix them, and even make versions available commercially under the same license.

The idea of letting enthusiasts remix episodes sounds intriguing, but later in the article it’s revealed that other partners to the project are the ad and marketing agencies WPP, Publicis, Aegis Media and Naked Communications who want to advertise their brands or hypothetical future products. Is this the trade off to making the show as open source? There's enough product placement in movies and television as it is.

The first episodes from the series will be set only two years into the future.