Ridley Scott in talks to direct Cormac McCarthy’s The Counselor

It seems director Ridley Scott’s follow-up to the much-anticipated PROMETHEUS won’t be the sequel to BLADE RUNNER as some have previously speculated.

Deadline is reporting that Scott will instead follow up his big return to sci-fi with a Cormac McCarthy-written drama titled THE COUNSELOR. McCarthy, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author behind stuff like NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, THE ROAD, and ALL THE PRETTY HORSES, wrote the film on spec (his first ever). The story follows “a respected lawyer who thinks he can dip a toe in to the drug business without getting sucked down. It is a bad decision and he tries his best to survive it and get out of a desperate situation.”

That THE COUNSELOR will be Scott’s next film shouldn’t come as a surprise to fans of the filmmaker; BLADE RUNNER sequel producer Andrew Kosove back in August of last year stated that the earliest a sequel could realistically begin shooting is early 2013. That leaves all of this year for development and an opportunity to squeeze in another, smaller film.