I am the law.
One of the greatest travesties in recent geekdom was the financial failure of the 2012 release of Dredd. Written and produced by Alex Garland (Ex Machina), and starring Karl Urban (Star Trek) and Lena Headey (Game of Thrones), Dredd corrected all the major wrongs perpetrated by the 1995 Sylvester Stallone led Judge Dredd. The film, one of the best of 2012, is estimated to have cost a modest (for a comic book movie) $35-50 million to produce, and pulled back only about $13 million during its theatrical run in the US ($41 million worldwide). Now the movie did find life in the secondary market with Blu-ray and On Demand rentals, making another $18 million or so, but it wasn’t enough for the studio to greenlight a sequel.
Fast forward a few years to last week, when the internet was all abuzz about a possible Dredd revival in the form of a NetFlix series.
This all was the result of a tweet from the film’s star Karl Urban;
Now this isn’t the first time an actor has lobbied for a sequel of some sort, nor is it even the first time Urban has expressed interest in playing Dredd again. But with nothing else to go on but a tweet, we decided to ignore it for the time being. Wait to see if something developed before getting anyone’s hope up. Then we saw this;
“Conversations are happening” – That’s not at all vague. This could mean anything, and was probably just an easy way to fire up the crowd at Calgary Expo, but hey – it’s more than we had before. Plus – wouldn’t it be fun?
Given the success NetFlix is having with their Marvel shows so far, it seems fairly likely that a project like this could be attractive to them. Fan petitions and internet groups have been trying to get a revival of this version of the character onscreen for about 4 years now, it would be great if NetFlix could swing in and make it a reality.
So, news is still pretty light, but we’ll do our best to stay on top of any developments. And if NetFlix (who just greenlit The Punisher) is too busy with their Marvel properties, maybe Amazon, Hulu, or Crackle will jump in. Hell, maybe even HBO. We’ve got our fingers crossed.
Images: Lionsgate
Grizzly Bomb 