Interest in adapting Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? began shortly after its 1968 publication, and the rights passed through several hands before Ridley Scott joined in 1980. Screenwriter Hampton Fancher's early draft focused on environmental themes rather than the humanity and religion central to the novel, and Dick publicly called it a terrible script. Scott hired David Peoples to rewrite it, and Dick was enthusiastic about the February 1981 version, which added the idea that replicants were infused with premature aging and reworked the final confrontation. The film's title came from a 1974 novel called The Bladerunner, after the producers obtained the rights to the name. Financing was tricky: the original backer withdrew after more than 2.5 million dollars had been invested in pre-production, and within ten days a new deal raised 21.5 million dollars. Harrison Ford was cast as Deckard after Dustin Hoffman left the project over differences in vision.

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.