The news I’ve been Dredding

Joseph Dredd, or as he is most commonly known JUDGE DREDD has been embedded in the public psyche since his first appearance in issue 2 of 2000AD back in 1977.

The first attempt at committing him to celluloid was made in 1995 when the Sylvester Stallone starring “JUDGE DREDD” was released. It was a commercial and critical disaster of a film, made worse by the fact that both it’s director Danny Cannon and it’s main Star Stallone (you know the name that’s even bigger than Dredd’s on the poster) were purported to be big fans of the character.

Stallone’s seeming insistence that we had to see his face throughout the film was what most fans remember about it (even more than the quite excellent ABC robot and Angel family appearances). You see if Dredd was a lovely Hollywood action hero with piercing blue eyes and winning smile, I don’t think we would have ever seen this panel. Do you?

This was somewhat eradicated from history when in 2012 Alex Garland  released DREDD (3D) a film that had been in development since 2006. The film was received well by fans and non fans alike as it stuck to the gritty nature of the comic but critics cited that it didn’t have enough of the satirical elements that are so prevalent in the comic. It didn’t do fantastically well at the box office, but has since done really well on home release. A true “cult classic”.

It is therefore quite disappointing that in a recent interview Alex Garland stated that it is unlikely a sequel will see the light of day, and if it does it would likely be without anyone involved with the first.

There isn’t, as far as I can tell, going to be a Dredd sequel. The basic mechanics of film financing say that if you make a film that loses a ton of money, you’re not going to get a sequel. And that’s basically what happened.

And I understand and appreciate the support the film has had, and the campaigns that have existed for it, and it’s really genuinely gratifying — I love it in all respects except one, which is when I hear about people buying copies of the DVD in order to boost sales and to change the figures. And what I want to say to them is, “Don’t do that. Keep your money.” Because the people that are making the decisions are much colder and harder than that. And the graphs they’re looking at are not really going to be sufficiently dented by that.

So the support for the film is truly appreciated. But if there is going to be a sequel, it’s not going to be me and the team of people who worked on the previous film, it’s going to be another bunch of people. And good luck to them, and I hope it happens. I really do. I hope they do a better job than we did.

This is really quite sad, the first film showed the potential of the whole universe of the Big Meg. A sequel could have built on this and we could have had a fantastic franchise born to rival anything Marvel have done so far.

So, what could the owners of Dredd do. How about we see them team up with Warner/D.C.  and bring out a gritty crossover movie?

Could they team up with 20th Century Fox and on the back of Neill Blomkamp’s recently announced “reboot” of the alien franchise release a gritty cross over movie?

No, well still with Fox

Or maybe, and possibly better still NETFLIX or AMAZON PRIME could buy the rights and make a television series.

I really believe a sequel would do great business for whoever, whenever it’s released, but Hollywood seem intent on releasing “reboots” and terrible vehicles to shoehorn people like Melissa McCarthy into like Spy.

They’re rebooting Gremlins,Ghostbusters are all women,  they’re rebooting Mad Max, they’re bringing sequels out to Smurfs, Resident Evil, Paranormal Activity, Hot Tub Time Machine, XXX, Machete, Magic Mike, The Karate Kid etc etc etc

I put the fact he wasn’t getting a sequel but all of these films are to Dredd himself recently to see what he thought.