Director hopes Ford will take a cameo role in forthcoming sci-fi outing, saying 'I've got to have him in it somewhere'

Harrison Ford may take a small role in Ridley Scott's forthcoming Blade Runner sequel, according to the director.

In an interview with the Independent, Scott said he hoped Ford would take a guest role in the planned project. "I don't think it'll be Harry [starring]," he said. "But I've got to have him in it somewhere. That'd be amusing."

It emerged earlier this year that Ford was in talks for the new Blade Runner film, which has since been revealed as a sequel with a female protagonist at its core. The actor, now 69, played the lead role of replicant hunter Rick Deckard in Scott's classic 1982 future noir. Scott's involvement was revealed in March last year and followed his decision to return to science fiction film-making after three decades with Prometheus, a film "set in the same universe" as 1979 futuristic horror Alien.

Blade Runner, which is based on the 1968 Philip K Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, recently took the top spot in SFX magazine's poll of the top 100 science fiction, fantasy and horror movies of all time. It was not a hit at time of release but has gathered plaudits over the years, thanks in part to the arrival in 1992 of Scott's director's cut, which excised the original's voiceover and a pegged-on "happy ending" added after original audience tests proved negative.

Set in an overpopulated future Los Angeles that never sees the sunlight, Scott's movie is about a "blade runner", played by Ford, who is tasked with hunting down a gang of replicants (android outlaws) who have escaped to Earth from an off-world colony. The film-maker left the audience to decide whether Deckard himself is a replicant.

Ford's involvement, even in a cameo, would most likely scupper that central enigma, since replicants were intended to live only a few short years in the 1982 film's original script.

Scott will premiere Prometheus this week, with the film due to arrive in UK cinemas at the weekend. The movie, which stars Charlize Theron, Michael Fassbender, Noomi Rapace, Guy Pearce and Idris Elba, centres on a space mission to a remote planet inhabited by aliens who may have helped create mankind.