Plenty of movies linger in development hell for a very good reason, as audiences often discover for themselves when a long-gestating project finally escapes and makes it way onto the screen, only for it to instantly become clear that maybe it should have stayed there. Blade Runner 2049 wasn’t one of those films, but it still wound up cratering at the box office.
Crafting a sequel to one of the most influential, acclaimed, and enduringly popular sci-fi stories ever told proved to be a tough nut to crack, especially when Ridley Scott was continually offering his own typically curmudgeonly responses as to how and why it never happened. In the end, Denis Villenueve was the one to step behind the camera, and he knocked it out of the park.
Showered in critical acclaim on its way to a pair of Academy Award wins, Blade Runner 2049 remains one of the rare legacy sequels that actually managed to live up to the hype, at least on a critical level. The visuals, atmosphere, world-building, and performances were all pulled right out of the top drawer, but that wasn’t enough to prevent disaster.
On an eye-popping budget as high as $185 million, Blade Runner 2049 crawled its way to an ignominious $267 million at the box office. Once marketing, distribution, and promotional costs had been factored in, the sweeping futuristic epic is estimated to have ended up roughly $100 million in the red.
While nowhere near enough paying customers showed up in person to catch it on the big screen, the acclaimed second chapter has at least proven itself to be a reliably consistent performer on streaming, with FlixPatrol revealing that Blade Runner 2049 has caught wind in its sails yet again to emerge as one of the most-watched flicks on Prime Video, Rakuten, iTunes, and Starz across the world this weekend.