The New York Times article published December 14’th entitled “The Greatest DVD’s Never Made” might tell us why we still can’t own a definitive version of Blade Runner (The Workprint, The original theatrical cut and a “Directors Re-cut”).
It seems like this “Special Edition” still is a long way from becoming a reality and below you can find out why..
It really comes down to whom has the ownership over the original negatives (Warner Bros. only has the distribution rights for the theatrical version and home video distribution) One of the “money men” whom financially saved Blade Runner when it had gone way over budget is Jerry Perenchio (Now C.E.O of the US broadcasting Spanish language channel Univision) has the legal rights to the original negatives and he is not releasing them.
It is now three years since Sir Ridley Scott announced that he was working on a “Special Edition” of Blade Runner and that the 1992 “Directors Cut” really was done too fast (and that the final “Directors Cut” really wasnt his final version of Blade Runner). Warner Bros. was going to distribute the “Special Edition” and in may 2002 reports of some “pesky legal problems” started to appear in magazines.
Whom knows why Mr. Jerry Perenchio wont release the original negatives, it’s well known that there where alot of fights during the making of Blade Runner and that Sir Ridley Scott even got fired during the production of Blade Runner so a wild guess is that it’s some old stuff behind why we don’t get to see “Blade Runner: Special Edition” any time soon. Until some agreement can be reached between whom ever that’s in this legal quarrel we will sadly be without the final version of Blade Runner.
The only available DVD release of Blade Runner the Directors Cut and it’s one of the earliest DVD releases and it’s without any special features and the audio format is Dolby Digital 2 Channel stereo. Blade Runner deserves a much better DVD than this and it’s tragic that such a masterpiece is kept locked up in some vault somewhere. People deserve a much better version containing atleast the original theatrical version together with the 1992 Directors Cut (or a Directors Re-cut) with Dolby 5.1 or DTS surround sound, the “On the edge of Blade Runner” documentury together with some more special features (An isolated movie score audio track would be perfect..)
There are now homemade bootleg versions of this “yet to be” Special Edition (Some versions containing both the 1982 Theatrical Version and the 1992 Directors Cut (and maybe even the workprint) together with the “On the edge of Blade Runner” documentury) on ebay.
You can find the original the NY times article here (Registation required)
Source: The Alt.fan.blade-runner newsgroup &
The New York Times article: “Greatest DVD’s Never Made:A Most Wanted List”
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