The first Blade Runner imagined a Los Angeles where people hunted replicants. The new one flips it. Set 50 years after Blade Runner 2049, Blade Runner 2099 takes place in a Los Angeles that has been reborn, in the words of its makers, "just not by humanity." Prime Video released the official final trailer on November 9, and the whole limited series arrives in two weeks.
Blade Runner 2099 release date and cast
All eight episodes premiere on November 25, 2026, on Prime Video, in more than 240 countries and territories at once. No weekly rollout.
Hunter Schafer plays Cora, a human fugitive who makes one last bid to stop running by taking on a new identity: Blade Runner. Michelle Yeoh plays Olwen, the replicant she is forced to partner with, who is days from dying. Together they chase a runaway hiding a truth that could bring down the city. Dimitri Abold and Lewis Gribben are series regulars, with Sheila Atim, Tom Burke, Johnny Harris, Daniel Rigby, Katelyn Rose Downey, Amy Lennox, Matthew Needham and Maurizio Lombardi in recurring roles.
The names behind it are the reason to pay attention
Spinoffs often lose the people who made the original. This one keeps an unusual amount of the bloodline on the credits. Ridley Scott, who directed the 1982 film, is an executive producer through Scott Free. So is Michael Green, who co-wrote Blade Runner 2049. So is Isa Dick Hackett, the daughter of Philip K. Dick, whose novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? started all of this. The series comes from Alcon Entertainment's television arm, the company that financed 2049, which won Oscars for its cinematography and visual effects.
The person to watch is Jonathan van Tulleken, who directed the first two episodes. His last big job was Shōgun, and if 2099 gets anywhere near that show's patience and texture, it will feel closer to the films than most spinoffs manage. Silka Luisa, who made Shining Girls, is the creator and showrunner.
The setup flips the films: a human fugitive passing as a Blade Runner in a city remade without humanity, a dying replicant as her partner, and Prime Video's own tagline for the trailer, "Whatever you can build, you can destroy," which reads like it was written for both sides. More on the series page.
If this is your season for big screen science fiction, Denis Villeneuve's world gets another chapter in our Dune: Part Three final trailer post, and we covered his night at the LACMA Art+Film Gala.
Our call: watch it, and start with the first two episodes on November 25. We have only seen the trailer, so this is a bet on people, not a review. A Shōgun director, a Dick family producer and the 2049 writer on one show is a stronger start than any Blade Runner spinoff has had, and with every episode dropping at once you can judge it on van Tulleken's two hours before deciding whether to binge the rest.
