You likely associate the names of Ridley Scott and Harrison Ford with Blade Runner, but there’s another name that should be on your mind when you think of the sci-fi classic: Hampton Fancher, a co-writer on the original 1982 film as well as the sequel, Blade Runner 2049, that’s due out October 6th.

While at Comic-Con, Perri Nemiroff had a chance to chat with Fancher about his original idea for a sequel to the first film. Jump to the 4:35 mark to see what he had to say or read along with the transcript below:

When we finished the first one, within a year we were talking about a second one. Ridley called, I was in New York and I went out to LA, and we batted stories around. Nothing came of it because of legal problems.

That partially explains why it’s taken 35 years to see another installment of Rick Deckard’s story. But in an alternate universe, here’s where Deckard would have gone next:

I guess, because I was reading in the newspapers, I thought Deckard had come to bad circumstances–he was nowhere–and he got assigned a Blade Runner job in Moscow, and it was all Russian, and cold, and snow … John le Carré, you know? That’s what I was thinking of. I remember telling Ridley that, “Harrison in Moscow!” Just that’s a good thing, right? And he said ::shrugs:: and nothing came of it.

It makes sense, considering that the U.S. was still in the midst of the Cold War with the Soviet Union in the early-to-mid 80s, that Fancher had those sociopolitical tensions on his mind. It certainly would have added an interesting wrinkle to the futuristic-yet-recognizable world of Blade Runner, though we’ll never know how that sequel would have shaped up. In our universe, however, Ford went on to appear in Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and Witness in the three years following Blade Runner. I’m okay with this version of the timeline.

Just think, this could have been Soviet Deckard: