With so much riding on big budget films the scripts have become hallowed texts with producers taking exceptional steps so that nothing is leaked. Keeping control of script details is everything and the one technique Producers were rumoured to use has been blue text on blue paper that made it impossible to be photocopied. Other actors have been sent to a guarded room where the script sits on a table and they’re allowed a short amount of time to read it before they have to leave the room and give a decision as to whether they want to accept the role.
The new ‘Blade Runner 2049’ film seems to have taken it to another level altogether if actor Lennie James experience is anything to go by.
Speaking to Newsweek he said, ‘They offered me the job. It came out of the blue and I said, ‘I need to read the script.’ They sent me 20 pages before my character arrived and 20 pages after my character was gone. It was on an app thing that I could only open on one device. I couldn’t take a screenshot, I couldn’t take a photograph, I couldn’t save it. They said, ‘You’ve got 36 hours.’ I had 36 hours with it and then it was gone. Then I had to make a decision to do it. When I did [decide to do it], they sent me the whole script.”
This continued even when they were shooting the film in Budapest last year and he went on to say, ‘This has never happened to me before… our [script] sides on the day, you had to sign them out, and they’d give you your sides with your words for that day, and then you had to sign them back in. And they wouldn’t let you get in your car to go home until you’d given your sides back. It was frantic. When I finished on the gig, I thought I’d sit down with the script and take it all in. No. Nine hours after wrap that script vanished from my iPad.”
No photos or videos have leaked from set a security was so tight and we only have the trailer which has provoked more questions. There’s going to be another trailer in the Spring and we#re likely to see a few strategically released photos but we’ll have to wait until October 6th when the film’s released.
