After Blade Runner 2049, which sci-fi cult classics also deserve a sequel?

The story behind the 35-year gap between Blade Runner’s first and second episodes is almost as ornate as the towering flame-lit cityscapes of Ridley Scott’s 1982 dystopian neon-noir future. When the movie first hit cinemas it received mixed reviews from critics. We delve into a few film-TV shows that possibly could come back to the big screens sooner or later!

DREDD

Can we please have a sequel to Pete Travis and Alex Garland’s Dredd for starters? The 2000AD adaptation in 2012 was a smash at the UK box office but struggled in the US, and failed to get the sequel it was so obviously crying out for.

Garland has since proven himself the coming man of sci-fi with the Oscar-nominated Ex-Machina, and the idea of future instalments set in this brutally minimalistic version of the comics’ Mega City One could be even more addictive. Star Karl Urban has spent a fair bit of time canvassing for a followup, yet so far to no avail.

FIREFLY

Joss Whedon’s Serenity really ought to be another matter entirely. This is the film-maker who made The Avengers, the fifth-highest-grossing movie of all time at the global box office with more than $1.5bn in receipts, and who has just been given the chance to rescue DC’s similarly momentous superhero epic Justice League.

Whedon has an entire space opera galaxy ready to be exploited in the form of the universe he created for cruelly curtailed TV show Firefly and its big-screen sequel, 2005’s Serenity. Darker and less fantastical than Star Wars or Guardians of the Galaxy, it’s a cosmos without aliens that somehow ends up being more intriguing for its barbarous and cold-blooded vision of the future as a 22nd century-set to the old west frontier. Will we ever see Nathan Fillion’s moody Captain Malcolm Reynolds in future big-screen efforts?

GATTACA

How about the work from Australian film-maker Andrew Niccol, whose Aldous Huxley-inspired 1997 thriller Gattaca remains an under-viewed cult classic. Set in a world where eugenics have led to humans being judged according to the quality of their genetic code, its failure at the box office shouldn’t mask the movie’s potential as the jumping off point for dozens of potential sequels.

It no longer matters if a given movie was a box-office dud when it first emerged on our cinema screens, for there’s every chance it will still emerge as a cultural touchstone, albeit if one is prepared to hang on a mere 35 years for society to catch up.

Perhaps you have your own suggestions?