What is the “Blade Runner Curse?
Simply that a number of the companies whose logos appear in the film had financial difficulties after the film was released, despite being market leaders in 1981/1982. The Bell System monopoly, for example, was broken up in late 1982, and all of the resulting Regional Bell operating companies have since changed their names and merged back with each other and other companies to form the new AT&T. RCA, which at one time was the leading consumer electronics and communications conglomerate in the world, was bought out by one time parent GE in 1985, and dismantled. Also in 1985, Coca-Cola released their “new formula,” resulting in losses of millions of dollars. Atari, which had 70% of the home video game market when the film came out, never recovered from the next year’s downturn in the industry, and by the 1990s had ceased to exist as anything more than a brand. The Atari of today is an entirely different firm, using the former company’s name. Cuisinart filed for bankruptcy in July 1989. P
