While there is a lot of competition for this title, Prime Video’s upcoming sci-fi spinoff series will be the ultimate cyberpunk show when it arrives. Sci-fi TV shows are enjoying a golden age thanks to the success of critically acclaimed hits like Silo, Foundation, and Severance, and upcoming projects like Amazon’s RoboCop reboot only make this trend more promising.
However, one sci-fi sub-genre has struggled to reap the rewards of small-screen adaptation. As evidenced by Prime’s cancellation of its best cyberpunk thriller after only eight episodes, the cyberpunk sub-genre has proven to be a hard sell on the small screen. Luckily, Prime Video’s upcoming spinoff Blade Runner 2099 can change this for good.
Blade Runner 2099 Can Be The Perfect Cyberpunk Series
Director Ridley Scott’s original 1982 movie Blade Runner is considered one of the formative texts of the cyberpunk sub-genre, along with the novel it is based on, author Philip K. Dick’s sci-fi noir Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. While Dennis Villeneuve’s belated 2017 sequel, Blade Runner 2049, was a hit with critics, both movies struggled at the box office.
Fortunately, the upcoming Prime Video show Blade Runner 2099 will be a streaming series rather than a standalone movie, which solves one of the riskiest elements of cyberpunk adaptations. While Blade Runner 2099’s AI-centered storyline couldn’t be better timed, the sub-genre can be notoriously tough for sci-fi newcomers to follow.
Cyberpunk stories feature a lot of immersive, fast-paced worldbuilding, which is part of why author William Gibson’s seminal novel Neuromancer is only receiving an Apple TV adaptation 42 years after its original 1984 publication. Similarly, both Blade Runner movies were forced to cram a lot of setup and plot into their comparatively brief runtimes.
Blade Runner 2099 Fixes The Sci-Fi Franchise’s Biggest Struggle
In contrast, Blade Runner 2099 can now use its much longer runtime to get the audience better acquainted with its version of the future. The spinoff’s story focuses on Michelle Yeoh’s Olwen, a replicant who is reaching the end of her life cycle, and the show’s plot promises to be as ethically murky as the rest of the franchise’s explorations of artificial android life.
Unlike the recent dystopian flop The Running Man, this spinoff has made the canny move from the cineplex to the small screen to ensure the show has time to set up its cyberpunk story right. As such, Prime Video’s Blade Runner 2099 could be the greatest cyberpunk series ever made when the series finally arrives on screens later this year.
- Release Date
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June 25, 1982
- Runtime
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118 minutes
This story originally appeared on Screenrant
