Animated JUDGE DREDD series in development

It's been confirmed - via a concept art and video leak - that a Judge Dredd animated TV series is in development.

Judge Dredd is a British comic book series which has been running continuously in the weekly 2000AD comic since 1977 and the monthly Judge Dredd Megazine since 1990, so an animated series is true to the series' roots. There's already been one animated mini-series, Superfiend, which aired in 2014 as a thank you to fans of the 2012 live-action film starring Karl Urban, who've been campaigning incessantly since then for a sequel.

Rebellion Studios are developing Mega-City One, a live-action TV series about rookie Judges in the titular city, with the possibility of Urban reprising his role as Dredd on a recurring (but not regular) basis (he's very keen on the idea). The project has been in development since 2017, but has not proceeded due to Rebellion not managing to attract a production partner so far.

The animated series, starring Dredd more directly (potentially voiced by Urban, we hope), is a good potential companion piece and will allow for more spectacular adventures than a live-action budget may be able to accommodate. This also strongly suggests that Netflix may be the target partner, as they are keen on having live action shows with animated companion pieces (as with Altered Carbon and The Witcher).

Whether the development pitch gets greenlit is another matter, but an adult-focused Judge Dredd TV show is very much something I never thought I wanted until now. It's a great idea, especially if they adapt the classic stories from the comics run like Apocalypse War and The Dark Judges.

RIP Carlos Ezquerra

The feted comic book artist Carlos Ezquerra has passed away from lung cancer at the age of 70.

Ezquerra was born in Spain in 1947. He started his artistic career drawing for Spanish periodicals, but in 1973 moved to London to work for the British comics market, starting with The Wizard and Pocket Western Library, as well as romance strips. In 1974 he started working on Battle Picture Weekly, a war comic, and gained his first fans for his visceral action scenes and readily-identifiable characters. Ezquerra used a shorthand of basing iconic characters partly on famous actors, basing the character of Major Eazy on actor James Coburn.

In 1977 Ezquerra was asked by editor Pat Mills to help launch his new comic 2000AD. Writer John Wagner had created a new character, a tough lawman of the future, and Ezquerra created the iconic look for Judge Dredd (whose formidable chin was inspiared by actor Clint Eastwood), as well as designing the colourful, insane landscape of Mega-City One. Ezquerra was credited as Judge Dredd's co-creator, but he was unhappy when another artist, Mike McMahon, was chosen to draw the first story proper. Ezquerra

Ezquerra and Wagner reunited in 1978 to create a new character, Strontium Dog, for Starlord comic (which later folded, with its characters moving into 2000AD). Strontium Dog, which was about the adventures of a mutant bounty hunter called Johnny Alpha, proved to be a long-running success with Ezquerra illustrating every story for ten years (until an ill-advised decision to kill off the character led to Ezquerra quitting; he rejoined the strip when the character was resurrected).

Ezquerra's career was dominated by Judge Dredd and Strontium Dog, with him illustrating both characters regularly until the late 2000s. During this time he sometimes guested on other strips, such as DC's Hitman and Garth Ennis's Preacher, but his focus remained on the two characters that defined his career. His contribution to both wound down after 2010, when he had a lung removed from complications arising from a cancer diagnosis. Despite his bullish defence - "who the hell needs two [lungs] for drawing?" - his work rate declined.

Ezquerra was one of the defining creative forces in modern British comics and he will be missed.

JUDGE DREDD TV show in development

Rebellion, the owners of 2000AD and Judge Dredd Megazine, have joined forces with independent production company IM Global to bring Judge Dredd to television. They are working on a TV show called Mega-City One and are looking to partner with a leading cable or streaming service to bring the Lawman of the Future to the small screen.

The TV series will focus on a team of Judges, the future lawmen and women of Mega-City One (a vast megalopolis stretching down the Eastern Seaboard of the United States in the early 22nd Century) who are judge, jury and executioner all in one. This is a change to the comics, which focus on Dredd as an individual, although he is backed up by a recurring background cast. It is unclear if Dredd will be part of the team, will lead it, will mentor it or may not even show up.

IM Global produced the 2012 movie Dredd, the positive reaction to which apparently helped pave the way for this deal. This raises hopes that Karl Urban, who starred as Dredd in that movie, will return, given his vocal support for the character and his belief that the character should continue on television.

IM Global has partnered with HBO, Amazon, FX and TNT in the past, raising hopes that this project will find a home on a premium cable or streaming service with access to the large budgets such a project will require.

How JUDGE DREDD predicted the future

At the start of March 1977 the newly-launched British SF comic 2000AD introduced its most famous, enduring and iconic character: Judge Joseph Dredd. Dredd is a law-enforcement officer with on-the-spot powers of judge, jury and, if necessary, executioner. Over the course of decades, Dredd has appeared in thousands of comics, numerous novels and audio dramas and two feature films. The world of Dredd, a hugely overpopulated American city of the early 22nd Century, is harsh and brutal, but also darkly humorous and bitingly satirical. It was also grossly fantastical and completely implausible from the perspective of 1977.

Almost half a century later and a third of the way from the comic’s launch to the date of its setting, Judge Dredd is starting to look a lot less satirical and a lot more accurate. In fact, a reasonable (and disturbing) claim could be made that Judge Dredd may yet emerge as the most prescient work of British science fiction of the late 20th Century.

A Century of Challenges

The story of the 21^st Century is likely to be the story of how humanity comes to grips with three great, interconnected problems: climate change, overpopulation and postcapitalism, the end of the centuries-long paradigm under which people work and get paid for it so they can survive. Improved technology, AI and automation will effectively end the relationship between work, survival and rewards that has been the norm. At the same time a changing climate and rising sea levels – even if kept to a modest degree – will present issues for food supply and mass migrations from affected regions (most worryingly, low-lying Bangladesh where at least 60 million people may be forced to move from coastal regions). The problems associated with the mass, worldwide reduction in the need for workers and a growing population crammed into the cities raises issues related to civil rights, law enforcement and simply keeping people occupied.

Lurking alongside these is the threat of nuclear war. Although the threat of a global nuclear exchange such as that envisaged during the Cold War (when Judge Dredd was first conceived and written) has receded significantly, the chances of a regional conflict using weapons of mass destruction are getting ever higher. The Korean peninsula and the Kashmir region are both potential flashpoints for a future nuclear confrontation. More remote, but ever-present, are the threats from global pandemics and antibiotic-resistant infections.

The World of Judge Dredd

The “classic” Judge Dredd background is that presented between the 1982 storyline The Apocalypse War (which reduced the city from its even larger and more implausible beginnings) and the 2011-12 epic Day of Chaos (which all but destroyed the city altogether). The primary setting for Dredd stories in this time period is Mega-City One, a massive super-metropolis extending down the Eastern Seaboard of the former United States, stretching from Boston, Massachusetts to Charlotte, South Carolina and extending inland to the Great Lakes and the Appalachians. Over 400 million people live in this vast area, many of them crammed into huge tower blocks containing up to 50,000 people apiece.

By the early 22nd Century, AI, automation and robots have replaced all menial jobs in the city and many others related to customer service and even medicine and science. The unemployment rate swings from around 92% to 97%. The overwhelming majority of the population survives on a basic, state-provided income. Some people use their free time productively and energetically, creating works of art or music or literature. Others do not, spending all day in front of the television and eating unhealthily. Mega-City One is prone to fads or crazes, where a new idea sweeps the city and people take it up in droves before getting bored and moving on. Crazes can be relatively harmless to downright unhealthy (competitive mass-eating, reducing people to immobile blobs trapped in their apartments) to extremely dangerous (such as “Boinging”, or bouncing around the city in indestructible plastic bubbles, causing immense property damage along the way). Bored citizens sometimes get involved in crime or tribalism. In the worst cases, this tribalism can boil over into Block Wars: the people from one block blame the neighbouring one for having better food or services, or stealing their water, or being too noisy, and they end up fighting. Mega-City One is a seething cauldron of boredom, tensions and grievances, constantly on the verge of boiling over.

The rest of the Earth isn’t doing too much better. In 2070 a series of nuclear exchanges reduced several large areas into radioactive wastelands. In the United States only Mega-City One on the east coast, Mega-City Two in California and Texas City in the south survived. The rest of the country was reduced to a burned-out ruin known as the Cursed Earth, inhabited by criminals, exiles and mutants. Other mega-cities exist in Asia, Australia and Europe, but most of Africa is uninhabitable. Sea levels have risen modestly, flooding low-lying areas, but the seas are also polluted (the Atlantic, for example, is now known as the Black Atlantic for the garbage and pollution that infests it, with most forms of marine life made extinct).

The world of Judge Dredd is, of course, a massive exaggeration of what could come to pass. But there are nuggets of truth in its setting which are becoming eerily more prescient as time passes.

Postcapitalism, or How a Robot Stole My Job

In the world of Judge Dredd robots of varying degrees of sophistication have replaced menial workers and factories are almost completely automated (with only a few human overseers or supervisors). Computers and AI systems handle everything from food deliveries and transportation to intricate medical procedures. An early Dredd story, The Robot Wars (1977), has one robot named Call-Me-Kenneth become self-aware and attempt to lead an AI uprising to destroy humanity, but he is halted and new safeguards introduced to stop this from happening again. As a result of this automation, well over 90% of Mega-City One’s population is unemployed and surviving on a basic universal income.

This possible outcome has been mooted many times in science fiction but actual economists and politicians have always scoffed at the idea. They point to history: when the spinning jenny was invented in the north of England in the 1760s, the inventor’s house was broken into and his machines smashed by people angry that his increased productivity would lower prices (which was correct) and destroy jobs (which was incorrect), since one worker with a spinning jenny could produce cloth at roughly eight times the rate of a worker by hand. However, market economics always favour increased productivity over reduced costs, so companies with the jennies would rather increase output (and thus profits) 800% rather than cut labour costs. Indeed, the increased profits were used to buy bigger premises and employ more people, resulting in the invention of factories and mass industrialisation as we know it. The same was true of almost every major technological invention and innovation from the middle of the 18th Century to the late 20th.

However, this movement has been reversed in recent decades. Large factories have been built (mostly in Asia but increasingly in Europe and the Americas) which are very nearly completely automated. Cars are constructed and built on assembly lines with minimal human oversight. One computer server can now hold and retrieve records that used to require a battery of clerks to maintain. A company like Amazon can hold, buy and sell goods across the entire planet with a few thousand employees (mostly in warehouse stacking and retrieval jobs which themselves are vulnerable to automation) whilst traditional retail companies require thousands of stores, each with a dozen or more employees, to do the same thing. All of these innovations are built on cost savings: computers, AI and robots are cheaper to build and mass-produce than workers are to train and hire, they never go sick, they never need holiday pay and they’re unlikely to sneak off to the toilet to check on their Facebook feed. Adding more people to these high-tech industries will increase costs and lower productivity and profits rather than increase them. The recent suggestion that jobs outsourced to China could return to Europe and the United States has been surprisingly positively received because many of these jobs have since been largely automated and it doesn't matter at all if a robot is based in China or the USA.

More recently we have seen traditional jobs in customer services requiring human interaction being lost to self-service machines, not just in supermarkets but increasingly in banks. The rise in personal banking over the Internet has also seen thousands of bank branches (with their attendant jobs) all over the world being shut down as people switch to more convenient ways of banking.

The sudden advent of self-driving technology, being pioneered by companies including Uber, Google and Tesla, is an even more alarming threat to traditional jobs. Driving, either taxis or trucks for mass transport of goods, is a valuable source of income for low-skilled workers. In less than a generation, we may see the majority of these jobs disappear in favour of vehicles that can stay on the road 24/7, never get lost, (hopefully) never have accidents and never overcharge their passengers.

Some countries are moving to tackle the issue: Finland is trialling a basic income, where people get enough money to survive from central taxation and anything they earn through work is added onto that amount. A similar trial in Aquitaine in France is also planned, and the Pirate Party in Iceland is advocating for a trial of their own. Economic models in Europe, where taxes are generally higher than the United States, indicate that a basic income is both possible and sustainable, and has positive outcomes (one study showed that only 1 in 10 people on the scheme voluntarily chose to stop working, and most of those were older people close to retirement anyway or parents choosing to spend more time with their children). Such a system would be harder to implement in countries such as the United States, as it would require a near-doubling of taxes to be sustainable. In the UK it would be more achievable due to the UK’s over-complex morass of tax credits and rebates, not to mention the enormously expensive welfare state bureaucracy. Eliminating all of these would move the country some way to affording a basic income (which would replace them).

The idea of a basic income is controversial, since it suggests that during the likely decades-long transitional period there would be people who worked hard to effectively subsidise other people who chose not to work at all: Switzerland rejected the notion by 76% in a referendum last year. Although studies show that relatively few people would voluntarily choose not to work at all, there would no doubt be some who did that make that choice, increasing social division and resentment. There is also the risk that those on a basic income in areas with no jobs would soon find themselves in the “just about managing” bracket with the temptation of engaging in crime to supplement their income. This outcome drives a lot of storylines in Judge Dredd and is also a troublesome outcome in James S.A. Corey’s Expanse novels, where automation has required most of the population of Earth to survive on a basic income (whilst those in Mars and the asteroid belt have to work much harder just to survive, to their annoyance). Still, it is another idea once consigned to SF that is now being more actively discussed in the real world.

Democracy and the Law

One of the more controversial aspects of Judge Dredd is that the system Dredd works for is essentially fascism. There are no elections and there are limitations on free speech. The argument is that in a city of 400 million people, it is simply completely impossible and unaffordable to go through lengthy trials, so the Judges are empowered to punish people on-the-spot and decide if they are guilty or not, with no right of appeal. Judges can fine citizens or sentence them to iso-cubes (small prison cells), suspended animation or even execute them for capital crimes. The Judges also act as officers in the city’s military (although it has both a small regular army and a militia back-up, known as Civil Defence, who also provide local security within the blocks) and fight on the front lines in times of war.

This blurring of the line between police, soldiers and the judiciary is deeply concerning, and it should be. To paraphrase a famous line from Battlestar Galactica, soldiers are trained to obey orders without question and to see their opponents as the enemy. Use soldiers for police work and they may see the civilian population, the people they are supposed to be helping, as the enemy, and react (and overreact) accordingly. The militarisation of the police has become a major concern amongst civil liberties groups in the United States in the last few years, and an issue in other countries where the threat of terror attacks has given police and intelligence services unprecedented powers to investigate, detain and even kill citizens whilst circumventing due process.

Another interesting aspect of Judge Dredd’s setting is that the United States Constitution and its three-pronged system of checks and balances is suspended in 2070 by the Judges (after an insane, populist American president elected to solve people’s economic problems instead starts World War III through his own ineptitude) and never reinstated. Dredd and many of the other Judges believe that democracy has been proven to be a failure, constantly giving power to weak, corrupt and selfish rulers and people are continuously shown to be voting against their best interests. In the loosely-connected Democracy story arc (running from Letter from a Democrat in 1986 to America and Twilight’s Last Gleaming in 1991), Dredd gradually shifts from this position after seeing the corruption possible in the Judge system and eventually convinces the Chief Judge to call a referendum on restoring democratic rule to elected officials. This referendum votes overwhelmingly to maintain the status quo, reaffirming Dredd’s faith in the system.

Writer John Wagner pointed out that this decision was probably wrong from a moral perspective, but he felt having the democratic system reinstated would shift the setting too far away from the satirical points he wanted to make. In addition, it should be noted that shortly before the referendum was held, Earth was attacked by an army of undead forces led by Sabbat the Necromancer which obliterated Mega-City Two and killed hundreds of millions of people before being stopped by Judge Dredd and the other Judges, which may have had a minor (!) impact on swaying the vote. The ultimate message is that, even with real outside threats at hand, the idea of suspending free speech and voting in a strong leader may be attractive but ultimately self-defeating. The comparisons with Nazi Germany in 1933 are of course clear.

From Time Out Hong Kong.

Mega-Cities in the Making

The clearest area of prescience in Judge Dredd is in the Mega-Cities themselves. Indeed, they are already here, and far earlier than anyone was expecting.

In 1985, eight years after the Judge Dredd strip started running, the Pearl River Delta region of China was predominantly rural. The large cities of Hong Kong and Guangzhou were located in the region along with numerous smaller towns, but this area was still dominated by farming and agrarian pursuits.

In 2017, that situation is completely different. Nine cities now exist in the region and are close to amalgamating into one massive mega-city with a population of approximately 54 million, making it easily the most populous conurbation on Earth. Behind it is the Greater Tokyo Metropolitan Area in Japan, with a population of 38 million, which is also likely to amalgamate with Nagoya and Osaka in the near future to form a city dominating most of the country (a forerunner of the Hondo mega-city in Judge Dredd).

Indeed, Mega-City One itself is taking shape. The Greater New York Metropolitan Area has a population of 24 million and is already not far from linking with Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, DC to form a single massive mega-city dominating the east coast, the Northeast Megalopolis (informally, “BosWash”). This conurbation is also likely to extend east to link up with Providence and Boston, and some (such as William Gibson in his Sprawl novels starting with Neuromancer) have speculated it could extend as far south as Atlanta. The Judge Dredd timeline speculates this could happen by 2050.

However, it does not appear likely that the real Mega-City One will ever get close to 400 million people. Current population trends show that the explosive population growth of the 20th Century is already starting to lessen and the world’s population will (probably and hopefully) never exceed 12 billion by the late 21st Century, with it expected to fall modestly after that point. Hopefully that one particular vision of Judge Dredd, with thousands of people crammed into crime-ridden arcology towers surrounded by freeways in near-permanent gridlock, will remain science fiction. But the comic, inadvertently or not, has identified a number of other serious societal and economic issues that will become very real concerns in the near future.

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Dredd

Mega-City One: a vast metropolis of 800 million people stretching along the Eastern Seaboard of North America and a safe refuge from the radiation-ravaged Cursed Earth beyond. Fifteen thousand crimes take place daily in this huge city and only the men and women known as Judges - law-enforcement officers who summarily evaluate crimes and dispense sentences - can try to keep the peace.

Cassandra Anderson is a new recruit to the Judges who has already failed one evaluation. She has been given a second chance due to her powerful psychic powers and Judge Joe Dredd, one of the city's most effective Judges, has been assigned to undertake her second evaluation. Anderson's test takes place in Peach Trees Block, a kilometre-high residential block of eighty thousand people, which has been taken over by a criminal gang and turned into a drugs factory. The two Judges have two hundred floors to ascend and countless obstacles in their way...and no back-up.


Dredd is the second attempt to make a live-action movie based on the extremely popular Judge Dredd comic book. First appearing in 2000AD in the late 1970s, Judge Dredd is a satire on police procedurals and action movies. In particular, it pokes fun at the fascistic idea of single 'good' police officers being trusted to carry out law enforcement without oversight (something presented as laudable in Hollywood cop movies of the 1970s and 1980s, with 'good' policemen being hampered by bureaucratic officials from doing What Is Right in their eyes). Another film version was made in 1995 starring Sylvester Stallone in the title role. Whilst the 1995 moved nailed the offbeat, demented feel of Mega-City One in the comics and had some great (if impractical) production design, it was a failure in the departments of story, character and Rob Schneider. The 2012 film improves upon it in almost every department (starting with the laudable decision to not cast Rob Schneider) to deliver a highly entertaining action movie.

Playing Dredd this time out is Karl Urban (or, more accurately, Karl Urban's Chin), who brings the requisite amounts of gravitas and presence to the role without descending into camp (as Stallone had a tendency to on occasion). He doesn't wisecrack (though a couple of his deliberately-understated reactions are quite amusing) but gets about business with relentless, grim efficiency. Dredd is presented as a force of nature. Staying true to the comics, he does not remove his helmet (unlike Stallone) and is presented as the faceless embodiment of The Law. However, he does have a highly practical and more flexible side to him, as shown by his willingness to ignore minor crimes, like vagrancy, whilst investigating much more serious ones. One of the limitations from the comic is that Dredd's character changes very slowly, only over years or decades, whilst writer Alex Garland only has an hour and a half to work with here. He can only hint that Dredd's opinions and character has been changed by his experiences in the block and with Anderson in the final scenes, but this is actually successful. Dredd himself looks surprised - or as surprised as a chin can be - by his final decision in the film which reflects his experiences.

Olivia Thirlby plays Anderson with understatement. Anderson is a rookie who takes the carnage of dispensing justice on the streets with much less stoicism than Dredd, but is not presented as weak, only inexperienced. Anderson's psi abilities allow her to take courses of action that Dredd simply never considers (and usually rather less violent ones) and are used in a manner that makes sense: an elaborate deception and trap that is laid for her fails in a rather spectacular fashion. With Dredd not evolving much as a character over the course of the film, it's Anderson whose character evolution and arc is more central to the film and this is handled well by the writer and actress.

Opposing both is Lena Headey as 'Ma-Ma' Madrigal, the gang leader who has effectively taken over the block. Ma-Ma is presented as an utterly ruthless criminal whose backstory (one of abuse before killing her abuser and taking over his crime empire) is not allowed to excuse her actions. She is a sociopathic monster rather than a scheming villain, which would not fit in well with the film's stripped-down atmosphere. Headey does some excellent work with the material she's given, though we actually spend a lot more time with Wood Harris (noted for his role as Avon Barksdale in The Wire). Though given a fairly limited character, Harris also does some good work, particularly in his psychic sparring scenes with Anderson where he tries to shock her with mental imagery only for Anderson to turn them back against him.

The film has a laid-back, minimalist atmosphere. In early scenes this is disappointing, with Mega-City One looking suspiciously like a mildly CGI-enhanced versions of Johannesburg (where the movie was filmed). The crazy exuberance of the city in the comic, which is the one thing the 1995 movie did get right, is simply not present here and Mega-City One becomes just another characterless, futuristic cityscape. In particular, presenting the blocks as being massively spaced out means that the Block Wars of the comics are simply not possible now. However, this minimalism does work well once Dredd and Anderson hit the block and the mayhem kicks in. The aliens and robots of the setting are not in evidence, with Dredd and Anderson instead having to take on a tower full of human criminals (a tower considerably larger in volume than the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, for comparison's sake) in a focused hour or so of combat scenes and psychological warfare. Aside from a few moments that don't make sense (like a certain scene with three miniguns which is not only gratuitous, but completely pointless) these scenes are directed with energy, vigour and an awful lot of CGI blood.

CGI is used sparingly throughout the film, with real explosions, bullets and models preferred. The most notable special effect sequences are those involving the 'Slo-Mo' sequences, where time is slowed down to a fraction of its normal rate by drugs. These add an air of balletic elegance that counterpoint the more frenetic action scenes. The film's score is also a success, with stripped-down industrial tracks giving way to more appropriately atmospheric mood pieces during the Slo-Mo scenes.

Overall, Dredd (****) is a film that overcomes a low budget and limited premise though excellent performances (even by the bit-players), some impressive effects and a relentless pace, helped by a concise running time. Though the film's disappointing box office performance - which in the UK at least could be attributed to a crazy decision to not show the film in 2D in most cinemas - makes a sequel unlikely, I for one would welcome a return for Karl Urban's take on the lawman. The movie is available now on DVD (UK, USA) and Blu-Ray (UK, USA).

Trailer for the new JUDGE DREDD movie

A trailer for the upcoming Judge Dredd film, Dredd, has been released. The film sees Judge Dredd taking on rookie Judge Anderson for training, only for both to become trapped in a 200-floor vertical slum ruled by a ruthless drug lord. The setting is Mega-City One, a vast megalopolis of 800 million people stretching down North America's eastern seaboard.

The film is set for release in the UK on 7 September 2012 and in the USA on 21 September. Karl Urban stars as Judge Dredd and Olivia Thirlby as Psi-Division Judge Anderson, with Lena Headey as the main villain, Madeline Madrigal (aka 'Ma-Ma'). The film was shot in South Africa with a budget of $45 million. It'll be in 3D (grumble) and has been R-rated in the United States.

First impressions: looks reasonable (backed up by some solid early reviews). Thirlby, Urban and Headey all look good, the costumes and sets look decent and the whole thing certainly looks more promising than the disappointing 1995 Stallone movie. However, the depiction of Mega-City One looks dull. The Stallone movie did have an impactful visual style that worked very well. This version looks fairly generic in comparison.

Before anyone asks, yes, Dredd keeps his helmet on for the duration.

First peek at the new Judge Dredd

2000AD artist Jock has published the first picture of Karl Urban playing Judge Dredd. The new movie has just entered production in South Africa:



Interesting, and possibly more faithful to the look of the comic book than the 1995 Stallone movie.

Karl Urban is Judge Dredd

The producers of the forthcoming new Judge Dredd movie have confirmed that they have cast Karl Urban in the title role. Urban is best-known for his roles as Eomer in the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy and as Dr. McCoy in the recent Star Trek movie.


The new film is due to start shooting in Johannesburg 'soon' and is being directed by Pete Travis, whose previous credits were the so-so Vantage Point and Endgame. This marks the second attempt to bring the lawman to the big screen, following a 1995 movie starring Sylvester Stallone which had a very mixed reception. The producers have stated that, unlike in the previous film, Dredd will not remove his helmet for the duration of the film, following the precedent established in the comic. The film will be in 3D and the script was written by Alex Garland.

Judge Dredd returning to the movies

Somewhat inevitably given the current raft of comic book movies and remakes doing the rounds, a new Judge Dredd movie is on the cards. A previous film was made in 1995 starring Sylvester Stallone which was a critical and commercial disappointment, though it has a certain guilty pleasure appeal and the production design was very impressive.


The new film will be scripted by Alex Garland, writer of the films 28 Days Later and Sunshine, and will be directed by Pete Travis (Vantage Point, Omagh and Endgame). Apparently it will be in 3D and will have a modest budget of around $50 million (which sounds ambitious, but there have been a slew of recent movies like Kick-Ass which have featured impressive sets, visual effects and action sequences on a relatively small budget). According to the linked article's sources, the script is truer to the comic book and retains the satirical edge and black humour notably missing from the Stallone film.

The character of Judge Dredd debuted in 1977 in the second-ever issue of 2000AD and has appeared in every issue since, as well as his own Judge Dredd Megazine and other spin-off titles. Dredd has been the subject of a number of computer games, novels, audio dramas and roleplaying games and has had cross-overs with numerous other comics characters, including several cross-dimensional run-ins with Batman. Dredd, his home town of Mega-City One (a vast conurbation covering most of the Eastern Seaboard of North America with over 400 million inhabitants) and his various enemies (most notably the Dark Judges) have become icons of the British comic industry and picked up a strong following abroad as well.

A properly-executed Judge Dredd movie could be very good indeed. The only problem is that a properly-executed Judge Dredd movie might not be tremendously commercial. But the creative talent behind it is good, so let's see how it goes.