BREAKING: Hampton Fancher is in talks to join director Ridley Scott in developing a new version of Blade Runner for Alcon Entertainment. Alcon is acknowledging the film is a sequel, and that it takes place some years after the first film concluded. Fancher cowrote the original Blade Runner, based on the Philip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?

Alcon Entertainment had the rights to the 1982 science fiction classic that starred Harrison Ford, but excitement on the project really escalated once Deadline revealed last August that Scott would come back and revisit the source material as director. Scott’s next film is Prometheus, a film that started as a prequel to his classic Alien, which he and Fox consider to be an original film. That’s different from Blade Runner, which at this point is being considered a sequel, even though Alcon has gone on record that the next movie won’t focus on Ford’s character, who hunted replicants until he fell in love with one. According to Alcon, Scott and Fancher intended Blade Runner to be the first in a series of films, but that didn’t happen. Now they are taking their crack at the second installment.

Scott is producing with Alcon cofounders Broderick Johnson and Andrew Kosove, as well as Bud Yorkin and Cynthia Sikes Yorkin. Thunderbirg Films’ Frank Giustra and Tim Gamble are exec producing. Fancher is repped by APA.