If you recognise that quote then, like me, you have watched Blade Runner far too many times. You may also be very annoyed at how damned hard it is to obtain Ridley Scott’s excellent Philip K Dick adaptation on DVD, especially in the UK. Well, news emerges from Warner Brothers that at last they are getting their finger out and moving to create a new release of the director’s cut from 1992 on DVD, but this will only be available for a short time. 2007 sees the 25th anniversary of Blade Runner and a four-disc set will be released, plus a limited theatrical re-release in the US (let’s hope the UK as well since it is a movie that begs for the big screen, especially that opening shot of a future LA, even if it does look a little like Grangemouth refinery at night).
Great to see this happening at last (wish they’d done it before I had to go overseas to source a DVD copy for my collection since it was deleted in the UK!) but I’m still left wondering why such a famous film which regularly features in most critics’ greatest movie lists, directed by one of the most famous modern directors and starring one of the biggest movie stars of the last two decades was allowed to fall out of circulation in the first place? If Citizen Kane or Casablanca were allowed to go out of DVD circulation the studios would be (rightly) lambasted, so why did they allow Blade Runner to do so? As ever, if we hear anything about a UK theatrical release we’ll bring it to you.
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