Joshua Dyal said:
The name for the movie was taken from the Alan E Nourse book, which was completely unrelated to the Philip k Dick novella. Basically, they thought it was a "Cooler" name and may have been frightened by the fact that "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" (the original title) was a complete sentance. Furthermore since it made use of allusion and other literary techniques it might confuse people who were only marginally literate (like Hollywood executives).
The name was either optioned directly or was optioned from a movie script based on the Alan E Nourse book. As mentioned in the previous post
Of course when the novelization of the Riddley Scott movie was released, it was called "Blade Runner" because otherwise people might not connect it with the movie, thus the dual titles. To further confuse things there was a "sequel" novel written by W.K Jetter called "Blade Runner 2 : Edge of Humanity" that carries on with the notion implied in some cuts of the film that Dekkard was a replicant as well. Note in the original short story, Dekkard is not only without a doubt human, but married and obsessed with buying a pet sheep.
