Blade Runner 2049 will be almost entirely free of green screen effects

Denis Villeneuve hates green screen. With a passion. And that that means there’s plenty of hope that Blade Runner 2049, which Villeneuve is directing, will have the same visual flair captured in Ridley Scott’s original 1982 sci-fi, limited CGI masterpiece.

Speaking to Variety about his Oscar-nominated film Arrival, Villeneuve opened up about the Blade Runner sequel, voicing his dislike of overused computer effects:

“I’m very old school. I wish I had the chance to do my Aliens [in Arrival] as animatronics. I hate green screens. It sucks out all my energy. I get depressed. [Cinematographer] Roger [Deakins] was insanely impressive in how he was able to create landscape with tricks.”

“For Blade Runner, we tried our best to do as much as possible in-camera, building everything... I think I can count on one hand how many times I saw a green screen in all of those months of shooting. There will be CG enhancements, of course, but as much as possible it was in-camera.”

Villeneuve also went on to call Blade Runner 2049 the “riskiest” film of his career, remarking: “I feel [the pressure] every day. At the same time, I’ve never been that inspired and excited. I love risk.”

“All of my projects have come with a certain amount of artistic risk, or sometimes a risk of how you portray reality. I did a movie once about a school massacre and I had a huge responsibility to the victims of those events. I did a movie about a conflict in Lebanon, so there again, you have a strong responsibility to reality … For Blade Runner, it’s artistic pressure, and by far the biggest ever.”

So, there you go, sci-fi fans: looks like Runner’s in good non-computer-generated hands.

Blade Runner 2049 will be released 6th October 2017