Production is officially underway on Blade Runner 2099 in Prague, with cameras rolling on the highly-anticipated project as of Sunday. The project will be one of the biggest to ever film in the Czech capital, with Barrandov Studio being completely occupied over the next six months to accommodate the sci-fi series.
Blade Runner 2099 is shooting under the working title Bulero in Prague, and has filed with the Czech Film Fund under two line items, Rebirth and The Hunted Becomes the Hunter. Like other recent TV productions, this is likely to avoid the controversial cap on tax incentives that limits rebates on larger projects.
Despite cameras rolling on the project, official word on Blade Runner 2099 has been sparse, with only two cast members confirmed: Michelle Yeoh, coming off her Oscar win for Everything Everywhere All at Once, and Hunter Schafer, who made a splash as a central cast member on HBO’s Euphoria.
According to limited plot information, Schafer stars in Blade Runner 2099‘s lead as Cora, a chameleon who has lived her entire life on the run and assumes one final identity to secure a stable future for her brother. Yeoh stars as Olwen, a Blade Runner confronting the end of her own life who is pulled into a widening conspiracy alongside Cora that has immense ramifications for Los Angeles in the year 2099.
Blade Runner 2099 follows the feature films Blade Runner, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford, and Blade Runner 2049, from Dune director Denis Villeneuve and starring Ryan Gosling and Ana de Armas. Scott serves as executive producer on the new TV series, but any potential returning cast members have yet to be confirmed.
Jonathan Van Tulleken, who directed for FX’s highly-praised Shogun, will helm the first two episodes of Blade Runner 2099 for showrunner Silka Luisa (Halo, Shining Girls). Jeremy Podeswa (Game of Thrones) was originally in line to direct before the project was delayed following last year’s actors and writers strikes, which also resulted in the project relocating from Belfast to Prague.
Blade Runner 2099 joins a number of high-profile TV productions that have shot in Prague in recent years, including Carnival Row, The Wheel of Time, the second and third seasons of Foundation, and the second season of Interview with the Vampire.
While those projects made use of locations around the Czech Republic outside of Prague, production of Blade Runner 2099 will reportedly take place entirely within the Czech capital, and largely at Barrandov Studio, where a futuristic Los Angeles landscape will be recreated.
“The crew [for Blade Runner 2099] will be here until December and the whole of Barrandov is occupied,” Czech Film Commission head Pavlína Žipková recently told Forbes, adding that producers were still searching for a handful of locations outside Barrandov.
“With TV series, the production is somewhat more adventurous; it often happens that the first episode starts filming before preparations for future episodes have finished.”
Local production of Blade Runner 2099 is being coordinated by Film United, who also worked on Prague-shot TV series such as Last Light, The Defeated (shot locally as Shadowplay), and Britannia.
Prague production on Blade Runner 2099 is scheduled to run over the next six months, wrapping in December. The project is expected to spend somewhere in the range of one billion crowns ($43 million) in the Czech Republic.
Lead photo: still from Blade Runner 2049 with a little Prague spin
