As much as Harrison Ford’s name has merged with Ridley Scott’s 1982 classic, “Blade Runner” — as well as the “Indiana Jones” and “Star Wars” franchises, the latter of which is still releasing tons of new movies and TV shows — in the last four decades, the actor wasn’t even remotely the first choice to play the film’s protagonist, Rick Deckard. Despite his now well-known roles in timeless classics like “American Graffiti, “Apocalypse Now,” and the two original “Star Wars” movies that all came out before “Blade Runner,” Ford wasn’t a leading star yet.
According to a 2012 Time article, the movie’s producers went through a list of established actors, including Jack Nicholson, Paul Newman, Sean Connery, Clint Eastwood, Peter Falk, Nick Nolte, Al Pacino, Burt Reynolds, Dustin Hoffman, and even Arnold Schwarzenegger. But once Scott and his team saw Ford in scenes in some early footage of Steven Spielberg’s “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” the decision to cast him as Deckard was unanimous, according to the film’s producer, Michael Deeley (via Los Angeles Magazine). But that didn’t mean it made everyone happy. As Scott recalled in a 2025 interview for GQ, “I remember my financiers saying, ‘Who the f*** is Harrison Ford?’ I said, ‘You’re gonna find out.’ So [he] became my leading man.”
They certainly did, alongside the rest of the world, since his decision turned out to be just perfect, in retrospect.
Blade Runner was a critical and financial mishit before it was considered a masterpiece
Made on a $28 million budget and only garnering a little over $6 million on its domestic opening weekend in the summer of 1982 (via The Numbers), “Blade Runner” was quickly dismissed as a misfire. Besides its commercial failings, the film’s critical reception was also quite divisive. There were praises that highlighted the mesmerizing and singular visual effects as well as “Blade Runner’s” dense and atmospheric cyberpunk world, but there were also heavy criticisms about its crawling plot and cold, unrelatable characters. The truth is, Ridley Scott’s sci-fi movie stood little chance to hit big in a year that also released such crowd-pleasers as “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” (which Vulture ranked as one of the top five Steven Spielberg films), “Conan the Barbarian,” and “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.”
The film needed time to find its target audience — and probably viewers did too — which it did once the director’s cut had been released in 1992, and Scott’s Final Cut in 2007. Thanks to the crucial changes (such as the erasure of voice-over and happy ending, and restoration of the original violence in addition to further enhancing the visuals), “Blade Runner” found a much-deserved appreciation. As of now, the sci-fi holds an 89% critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes as well as 91% from viewers, but you don’t really need those numbers to know how influential and foundational the flick has become over the years — even earning a sequel, “Blade Runner 2049,” three and a half decades later, which saw Harrison Ford reprise his beloved character. Proving once again that Scott’s casting choice was right and stood the test of time as much as his vision did.
