Roger Deakins has been tapped by director Denis Villeneuve to be cinematographer on Alcon Entertainment’s Blade Runner sequel, reteaming the DP and helmer who did Prisoners together and most recently Sicario, the drug-trafficking drama that just knocked it out of the park at its Cannes Film Festival competition premiere. Deakins has been nominated for 12 Oscars including for the Angelina Jolie-directed Unbroken last year, but he’s never won — a shocker when Sicario star Emily Blunt was told that fact at an afterparty on the Croisette.
It certainly seems like Deakins will have a couple of legit opportunities to break his losing streak with Sicario (Lionsgate opens it in the U.S. on September 18) and now Blade Runner, the follow-up to Ridley Scott’s 1982 sci-fi classic. Harrison Ford is returning as Rick Deckard and original co-writer Hampton Fancher and Michael Green penned the new script for the pic, which takes place several decades after the original. Principal photography is set to start in summer 2016. Deakins is repped by ICM Partners.
Samuel Goldwyn Films has acquired worldwide rights to Chris Bell’s Tribeca Film Festival documentary Prescription Thugs, an exposé of the legal prescription drug business in the U.S. As Bell learns more about an industry he had been brought up to trust, he falls down his own hole of addiction, bringing a very intimate style and conclusion to this investigation. The deal was negotiated by Ian Puente, VP and general counsel of Samuel Goldwyn Films, and by producer Daniel J. Chalfen and attorney Evan Krauss of Gray Krauss Stratford Sandler Des Rochers LLP on behalf of the filmmakers.
Subscribe to Deadline Breaking News Alerts and keep your inbox happy.