Unfilmable but rename-able

I was having breakfast with a mate this morning who had just started watching Foundation on Apple TV, and I warned him that the first series was a bit ordinary but that he should stick with it because it got so much better in the later series.

I don't know how we segued from that to Blade Runner but I think we were talking about unfilmable books. Rob told me something I’d never known. Blade Runner was not a title Ridley Scott came up with because the original Philip K Dick story, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? would’ve been a box office disaster.

Turns out there was an actual 1970s sci-fi book called The Blade Runner. It was written by Alan Nourse, and apparently it was also largely unfilmable – possibly why they asked William Burroughs to write the adaptation. Which, unsurprisingly, was likewise unfilmable.

But somebody connected with Ridley Scott’s adaptation saw a copy of Burroughs' screenplay and loved the title so much that they acquired it for their movie. They bought the three words and nothing more.