Los Angeles, 2019 © 1997 Nicklas Ingels

The rumor mill over at The Digital Bits has some good and some bad news on what’s happening to the Blade Runner : Special Edition. Here’s the latest..
“Here’s some good news and bad news all at once. Sources are telling us that Warner is FINALLY at work once again on a Blade Runner: Special Edition. That’s the good news. The bad news is that instead of the 3 or 4-disc ultimate edition we all hoped for (featuring all the different versions of the film), the title is now likely to be one of the studio’s 2-disc editions, featuring only the recent “director’s cut” version of the film (remastered from a new HD transfer), the Channel 4 On the Edge of Blade Runner documentary and perhaps a few other odds and ends. Look for it sometime in the first half of 2005″
So, atleast after years of waiting Warner seems to go their own way in the battle with rumoured battle with Jerry “Pennochio” Perenchio and finally release a decent and spiced up version of Blade Runner: Directors Cut.
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Source: The Digital Bits Rumor Mill
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This was posted at the hometheaterforum.com and gives us some insight to why we still don’t have the “Blade Runner: Special Edition”
I just attended a lecture at my college being given by producer Alan Ladd, who was one of Blade Runner’s many producers. Thankfully, there was at least one person in the audience who couldn’t resist asking about the film’s troubled DVD release, and here’s what Mr. Ladd had to say:
-Ladd insisted that Ridley Scott wanted the narration when the film was first released. Ladd said that Scott came to him when the film was in post and asked for permission to do a narration. Scott said that he wanted the film to have a noirish-old detective movie feeling. Ladd says that Ridley Scott’s comments after the film’s release claiming he never wanted it was just not true.
-As has been widely reported, Harrison Ford and Ridley Scott did not like each other at all. Alan Ladd said that Scott and Ford didn’t even talk to each other after the first day.
-Ladd claimed the version originally released was the cut that Scott had presented to the studio as his director’s cut. Ladd expressed unhappiness at the current DVD release being labeled as a director’s cut because it was just an unfinished earlier workprint of the film.
-Ladd said that Scott filmed the unicorn sequence originally and it was Scott’s decision to pull it from the film initially.
-Ladd says that one of the film’s other producers, Jerry Perenchio, has the final say over whether or not any new versions of the film can be issued. Ladd said that Perenchio and Scott absolutely loathed each other. Perenchio is a billionaire, and has no financial need for the film to be reissued. He believes that it’s in legal limbo because Perenchio hates Scott and is suppressing any new versions purely out of spite.
-Ladd says at one point people were being brought together for work on a special edition DVD, and that he was interviewed, or at least contacted about being interviewed, before legal issues brought the film to a halt. Ladd says that Scott was considering having Ford re-record a new narration before the plug was pulled on the project.
…and, of course, the question on everyone’s mind:
-Ladd is not optimistic at all about the film being reissued or redone. He actually stated that he believes because of the conflict between Perenchio and Scott that it will never happen.
So I guess some of that is stuff we all know, and maybe a couple new little tidbits, or maybe not. As the film was made over twenty years ago, it is possible that some of Ladd’s recollections may not have been completely accurate. However, I will say that Ladd spoke about a great many films and his knowledge and memory of the work he had done seemed pretty good. I wish I had better news to report.
As it says above, Blade Runner was made over twenty years ago and hopefully Ladd’s memory isn’t 100% accurate, but then again this might be the reason to why we should (?) forget about ever getting a “Blade
Runner: Special Edition”..

Source: The Alt.fan.blade-runner newsgroup.
The Home Theater Forum: Some Blade Runner info from Alan Ladd (producer)

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”