1982’s Blade Runner is not only one of the best Ridley Scott films, but one of the very best sci-fi films ever made – and one of Harrison Ford’s most iconic roles. But he almost wouldn’t have appeared in front of the camera as Deckard at all if the director’s backers had had their way.
Blade Runner without Harrison Ford is almost unimaginable today…
Blade Runner without Harrison Ford? The sci-fi film was almost made without him
Filmmaker Ridley Scott remembers the Blade Runner casting in the early ’80s in a recent interview with GQ: “Harrison Ford wasn’t a star yet. He had just finished flying the Millennium Falcon in Star Wars. I remember my financiers asking: ‘Who the heck is Harrison Ford?’ I said, ‘You’ll see.’ That’s how Harry became my leading man.”
It’s almost unbelievable that people in Hollywood didn’t see or know Harrison Ford as a star, even after Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. Screenwriter Hampton Fancher is said to have written the Blade Runner script with Robert Mitchum (Golden Poison) in mind and for a while Dustin Hoffman (Tootsie) was even in discussion for the Deckard role. According to the documentary Dangerous Days: Making Blade Runner, he left the project due to creative differences.
Harrison Ford also returned in the Blade Runner sequel
In 2017, Harrison Ford returned to the role of Blade Runner Rick Deckard, who is now in exile. In Blade Runner 2049 by director Denis Villeneuve, he appeared in front of the camera with Ryan Gosling to do sci-fi things together with his young successor.
The dystopian novel provided the template for the science fiction classic Do androids dream of electric sheep? by cyberpunk visionary Philip K. Dick. The originals for films such as Minority Report, The Man in the High Castle, A Scanner Darkly and Total Recall also go back to him.