Judge Dredd Creator Weighs in on Movie Adaptations
Posted 01.30.10 by BrentJS
With all of the great untapped comic book characters out there, it's kind of surprising that anyone would take another stab at making a Judge Dredd movie, considering the 1995 Sylvester Stallone vehicle barely made its money back at the box office and was pretty much universally panned by critics. Dredd's creator, John Wagner, was especially disappointed with how his beloved character was treated by Hollywood.
I hated that plot. It was Dredd pressed through the Hollywood cliché mill, a dynastic power struggle that had little connection with the character we know from the comic.
With a reaction like that, one would think Wagner would be adverse to seeing another attempt to adapt Dredd for the big screen. But, in a recent interview with 2000AD Review, Wagner sounded optimistic about the new Judge Dredd movie being produced by Danny Boyle's DNA Films, if not overly confident that it will actually come to fruition.
Confident? I will be once I hear they've started filming.
Though the Academy Award-winning director will not be helming Judge Dredd, Boyle hired his 28 Days Later and Sunshine screenwriter, Alex Garland, to pen the Dredd script. And, according to Wagner, it should be a much more satisfying Dredd movie than the first one.
I have read the script and seen [concept artist] Jock's visuals. While I can't go into detail about the content, I can say that it's high-octane, edge-of-the-seat stuff, and gives a far truer representation of Dredd than the first movie.