The first really complete film script had been finished on the 24th July 1980 by Hampton Fancher. From many points of view this version was equal to the definitive film. For example, the 1980 script begins with the Voigt-Kampff test and the most of the dialogues between Holden and Leon are identical to the ones of the final version. Similar, but not perfectly the same, were the scenes where captain Bryant talks to Deckard about the missing replicants; the ones when Deckard searches Leon's hotel room, and the ones where Deckard meets Rachael at Tyrell Corporation. However, there were many differences too. I.e. Deckard is firstly introduced sitting on a high-speed train, traveling across the desert towards Los Angeles. Gaff's character is less present, while the Esper has become more important, being, for the 1980 script, the talking police central computer. Fancher's script ends with the scene where Deckard drives Rachael to the countryside for the first time in her life, so that she could see the true snow; immediately after, Deckard shoots, killing her. The last scene shows Deckard driving his car along a lonely road, while a voice over tells us that being a human means to make some choices and that Rachael had chosen suicide. Fancher's script is also important because it introduced a new replicant (apart from Pris, Roy, Leon and Zora), whose next exclusion would have caused a sort of confusion. The sixth missing replicant in the final version, became the reason of many discussions. But the truth about this is much more complicated. In fact, in the first screenplay appears a new replicant, named Mary, described as a typical American housewife. This character survived the next script revisions and it was given a part in the film. But later, because of the limited budget, this part had been removed. "The changes Scott was making to the screenplay were continuos and deep", says Fancher. Some of Scott's revisions were great ideas, others were crazy. He was the responsible for the game of chess between Sebastian and Tyrell, we now see in the film, a solution Fancher still believes too easy and too much taken for granted. Originally, the writer thought about Rachael to be morally above Deckard, and that she was always blaming him. Even this detail has been removed. "However, in the last months of 1980 I realized that an involuntary eliminating process had begun. And it was Ridley's fault, who was getting rid of some basic concepts of the story. So we had too many arguments. Eventually we agreed that we were getting nowhere. And so they excluded me from the film".

A new scriptwriter was engaged, David Peoples. Scott was searching for someone who could include some menacing and mysterious touches, to give prominence to Deckard's detective character. Peoples made those changes he wanted. Peoples also created a new way of referring to androids: "The word android is too common and you can find it in a lot of material, either good or bad. People would have believed Blade Runner a film about robots, while it is not. We were considering to find a new term. The biological replication process proved to be the final inspiration. So the word 'replicant' was born".

Hampton Fancher's Script - 1980

David Peoples' Script - 1981

Alternate Endings:

January 1980

December 1980

February 1981

June 1982