Blade Runner Dog Names

There’s much to be said about the progressive adaptations of original concepts, especially when they begin to span multiple forms of media. That’s the exact case for Blade Runner, which took a few liberties from the original novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Phillip K. Dick, when it jumped off the pages and onto the silver screen thanks to the brilliant direction of the famed Ridley Scott. 

Although the book had generated interest in the film industry shortly after its publication in 1968, it took nearly ten years to be optioned by someone that Dick actually felt did justice to his story, and it seemed that screenwriter Hampton Fancher and director Ridley Scott were the men for the job. Although there were some differences between the film and novel, Scott largely stayed true to the feeling, characters and narrative. 

However, by the time a sequel got in motion, it was already 2016 and there was no basis other than the original film for director Denis Villeneuve to work from. Luckily, for Villeneuve, the film, and its audience, Fancher returned to write the second screenplay, providing necessary cohesion outside of a few reprised roles. But since the film was to be set 30 years after the original (not unlike the time between production of the two), Fancher was able to get creative by adding new characters and pairing them up with the classics to create a perfect web of narrative interest. 

One of the characters that fans surprisingly responded to most was a dog that was given to Deckard. After the film premiered, Bo, Deckard’s temporary canine sidekick in the film, claimed much attention on message boards all over the Internet. Not only had Bo been seen as a new favorite character (despite his limited time on-screen), but there was also debate over the type of breed he is. The large, hairy beast was assumed to be a mixture of an Estrela Mountain Dog and a Caucasian Ovcharka, though it was never really confirmed since the dog goes uncredited in the film. 

But audiences weren’t the only ones to notice him either. After the film’s premiere, the dog who played Bo was selected as a finalist for the Palm Dog, a mainstay award at Cannes for the best canine actor in film every year. He was pitted against George VI’s corgi from Darkest Hour, the hunting dog from All the Money in the World, and the Oscar-nominated Chilean flick A Fantastic Woman and took home the main prize.