Jared Leto Stars in a New Prequel to Blade Runner 2049: Watch It Free Online

Blade Run­ner, as any­one who’s seen so much as its first shot knows, takes place in the Los Ange­les of Novem­ber 2019. Though the film flopped when it came out in 1982, the acclaim and fans it has drawn with each of the 35 years that have passed since did­n’t take long to reach the kind of crit­i­cal mass that demands a sequel. After numer­ous rumors and false starts, the Octo­ber release of Blade Run­ner 2049, pro­duced by Blade Run­ner direc­tor Rid­ley Scott and direct­ed by Arrival direc­tor Denis Vil­leneuve, now fast approach­es. The new movie’s pro­mo­tion­al push, which has so far includ­ed trail­ers and mak­ing-of fea­turettes, has now begun to tell us what hap­pened between 2019 and 2049.

“I decid­ed to ask a cou­ple of artists that I respect to cre­ate three short sto­ries that dra­ma­tize some key events that occurred after 2019, when the first Blade Run­ner takes place, but before 2049, when my new Blade Run­ner sto­ry begins,” says Vil­leneuve in his intro­duc­tion to the brand new short above.

Tak­ing place in the Los Ange­les of 2036, the Luke Scott-direct­ed piece “revolves around Jared Leto’s char­ac­ter, Nian­der Wal­lace,” writes Col­lid­er’s Adam Chit­wood, who “intro­duces a new line of ‘per­fect­ed’ repli­cants called the Nexus 9, seek­ing to get the pro­hi­bi­tion on repli­cants repealed,” the gov­ern­ment hav­ing shut repli­cant pro­duc­tion down thir­teen years before due to a dev­as­tat­ing elec­tro­mag­net­ic pulse attack for which repli­cants took the blame.

A time­line appeared at Com­ic-Con this past sum­mer cov­er­ing the events of the thir­ty years between Blade Run­ner and Blade Run­ner 2049, though in very broad strokes: in 2020 “the Tyrell Cor­po­ra­tion intro­duces a new repli­cant mod­el, the Nexus 8S, which has extend­ed lifes­pans,” in 2025 “a new com­pa­ny, Wal­lace Corp., solves the glob­al food short­age and becomes a mas­sive super pow­er,” in 2049 “life on Earth has reached its lim­it and soci­ety divides between Repli­cant and human.” The two oth­er short films to come should just about tide over fans until the release of Blade Run­ner 2049 — not that those who’ve been wait­ing for a new Blade Run­ner movie since the 1980s can’t han­dle anoth­er month.

The short Blade Run­ner 2049 pre­quel, enti­tled “Nexus: 2036,” will be added to our list, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Blade Run­ner 2049’s New Mak­ing-Of Fea­turette Gives You a Sneak Peek Inside the Long-Await­ed Sequel

The Offi­cial Trail­er for Rid­ley Scott’s Long-Await­ed Blade Run­ner Sequel Is Final­ly Out

Philip K. Dick Pre­views Blade Run­ner: “The Impact of the Film is Going to be Over­whelm­ing” (1981)

The Blade Run­ner Pro­mo­tion­al Film

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.