[10][11] A sequel to Blade Runner (1982), the film stars Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford, with Ana de Armas, Sylvia Hoeks, Robin Wright, Mackenzie Davis, Dave Bautista, and Jared Leto in supporting roles.

He sends his replicant enforcer, Luv, to monitor K. At Morton's farm, K finds the date 6.10.21 carved into the tree trunk and recognizes it from a childhood memory of a wooden toy horse.

Using Mariette's tracker, the replicant freedom movement rescues K. When their leader, Freysa, discloses to him that Rachael's child was a girl, K deduces that Stelline is her daughter and that the toy horse memory is hers.

[15] Director Ridley Scott conceived two ultimately unrealized projects vaguely connected to the Blade Runner canon in the interim, such as a stand-alone sequel titled Metropolis.

[16][17] Scott's second project, a collaboration with his son Luke and younger brother Tony titled Purefold, had been imagined as an episodic webseries examining conceptions of empathy.

[17] Nearly three decades after the film's release, Alcon Entertainment co-founders Andrew Kosove and Broderick Johnson purchased the intellectual property from producer Bud Yorkin.

The terms of Alcon's acquisition prohibited the remake of the original Blade Runner film, but entitled the company rights to syndication, franchising, and derivative media such as prequels and sequels.

[18] No longer satisfied with the profits of their smaller-budget features, and with investor funding scarce, Kosove and Johnson sought to increase Alcon's output of blockbuster films: "If you don't have repetitive cash flow, which is a fancy way of saying being in the sequel business, you are going to be in trouble eventually".

[24][25] Alcon producers provided some insight into their vision but were unsure of how to approach the Blade Runner story,[26][27] hence they and the normally candid Scott were tight-lipped when questioned further about the sequel's artistic direction in interviews conducted during pre-production.

Spielberg had sought copyright approval during the filming of Blade Runner 2049, which Alcon producers refused as they feared the explicit reference would affect their commercial prospects, even though Ready Player One was released months later.

[23][41] Ford stated the thirty five-year passage of time, plus the synthesis of a new story with Deckard's already-established backstory, lent context necessary to playing his aged character.

[42] The screenwriters tailored K specifically for Gosling,[43] but it was the opportunity to work with Villeneuve and experienced cinematographer Roger Deakins, paired with his faith in the script, that convinced the actor to join Blade Runner 2049 in his first leading role in a blockbuster production.

[44][45] Gosling had developed a reputation for his discriminating film choices; the prospect of working on big-budget franchise sets never enticed him,[45] yet he trusted the filmmakers' instincts, and the thematic complexity of the script further reassured his decision.

[48] An actress of national renown in Spain who aspired to break into English-speaking roles, Ana de Armas auditioned several times before landing the film's female lead.

[43][50] Leto refrains from naming specific sources that shaped certain aspects of his character's persona; rather the actor cites real-life friends who work in tech as a general influence.

[51] Notorious for his unorthodox preparation for roles, Leto continued his unusual practices in Blade Runner 2049 by wearing custom opaque contact lenses to work the set completely blind.

"[52] A raft of mostly young actors comprise Blade Runner 2049's supporting cast; David Dastmalchian, Sylvia Hoeks, Carla Juri, Mackenzie Davis, and Barkhad Abdi were lesser-known stars with years of expertise in independent cinema.

[53] Among the few exceptions are Dave Bautista, Hiam Abbass, and Lennie James, whose castings were revealed between April and July 2016;[54][55][56] and Robin Wright, assigned to one of three major female roles in Blade Runner 2049.

[67] Together with production designer Dennis Gassner, the men brainstormed ideas for the film's visual palette as Villeneuve was editing his science fiction drama Arrival (2016).

[61] The two were inspired by the architecture of several global cities to develop a hostile, imposing brutalist style for their fictionalized Los Angeles, among them the appearance of Beijing's cityscape in dense smog, the foothills of southern Spain, Bangladeshi shipyards, and certain mid-twentieth-century landmarks in London (such as the Barbican Estate and Trellick Tower).

[68] For Las Vegas-set scenes, the filmmakers researched intense dust storms in the Sahara, Saudi Arabia and Sydney to replicate the sandy desert ruins Villeneuve sought.

[15][61] They shot the project in 1.55:1 aspect ratio from a single Arri Alexa XT Studio camera with Zeiss Master Prime lenses, assisted with an attached crane arm or a dolly.

[61][72] The filmmakers conducted tests with an Alexa 65 camera but preferred the XT Studio's somewhat grainy image quality, and the choice of lenses corresponded to the scale and lighting specifications of the scenes.

[89][90] Blade Runner 2049 premiered on October 3, 2017, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, although following the 2017 Las Vegas Strip shooting, the red carpet events were canceled prior to the screening.

[94] Alcon Entertainment partnered with Oculus VR to create and distribute content for the film exclusively for its virtual reality format and launched it alongside the theatrical release of October 6, 2017.

"[119] Deadline Hollywood attributed the film's performance to the 163-minute runtime limiting the number of showtimes theaters could have, lack of appeal to mainstream audiences, and the marketing being vague and relying on nostalgia and established fanbase to carry it.

The website's consensus reads: "Visually stunning and narratively satisfying, Blade Runner 2049 deepens and expands its predecessor's story while standing as an impressive filmmaking achievement in its own right.

[137] The Villeneuve–Deakins collaboration was noted for the creation of cinematography displaying "the kind of complex artistry one would expect from the profession's top veteran",[138] with Deakins' work described as "bleakly beautiful".

[143][1] Other journalists, such as Peter Travers of Rolling Stone, viewed the two men as "double dynamite" in conversational scenes, in which the film assumes "a resonance that is both tragic and hopeful".

[147] In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, screenwriter Michael Green expressed surprise that K's death had been called into question, referring to the use of the "Tears in rain" musical motif in the final scene.