'Blade Runner 2049,' premiering 35 years after the original, is a big bet for its backers

In 2010, producer Bud Yorkin and his wife, Cynthia, approached Century City-based Alcon Entertainment with an audacious proposal: to make a sequel to the landmark science fiction film "Blade Runner." There were abundant reasons to avoid the project. Ridley Scott's 1982 original, about a futuristic society where androids known as "replicants" are almost indistinguishable from humans, is revered by notoriously protective science fiction fans. Sequels rarely live up to expectations, especially when the originals are several decades old. Like the movie's futuristic cops tasked with snuffing out rogue robots, moviegoers know how to tell a fake from the genuine article.