Lionsgate has purchased the rights to produce Dredd, the adaptation of the popular 70’s comic Judge Dredd. Rumors have it that this new production will be entirely more faithful to the original source material and only marginally resemble the reviled 1995 Sylvester Stallone version.
Pete Travis (
Vantage Point) directs a script by Alex Garland (
28 Days Later).
Dredd is set to begin production on November 12th in
Cape Town, South Africa, with a modest budget of $45 million. IndieWire has a
script review that likens the film to
Die Hard and
Blade Runner.
Karl Urban (Star Trek) stars as Judge Dredd and Olivia Thirby (The Wackness) co-stars as Cassandra, a rookie judge under the Judge’s tutelage. Urban told io9 the following about the second go around for the character:
"The Dredd story we are going to tell is really a day in the life of Dredd as he puts his rookie through her paces to determine whether she's going to make it as a judge. It's certainly going to be a high-octane, action-fueled kind of a film. I feel very confident that this is going to be the Judge Dredd movie that audiences have been waiting for since 1977. I say that because we've got (Judge Dredd co-creator) John Wagner on board and he's 100 percent behind what we are doing. I think we're just going to be a lot closer to the source material than any other version that's been made."
Urban has also mentioned that Dredd, true to the character, will keep his helmet on for the duration of the film. Rejoice fanboys.
