Back in 2012 Lionsgate created revisionist history by erasing the 1995 adaptation of the comic book “Judge Dread” from our brain.
Karl Urban starred as the title character in Dredd, which was originally portrayed by Sylvester Stallone. The movie was awesome, even if it was an alleged rip-off of Gareth Evans’ The Raid (there’s internal debate about this). Hollywood doesn’t work the way we’d like it too – because it’s all about money (it’s a business) – and the remake was a box office disaster (it took in $35 million worldwide on a $50 million budget that doesn’t include marketing costs).
Because of the bomb, the idea of a sequel seems null and void, which is a bummer considering how fun the colorful genre pic was. Still, producer Adi Shankar has openly acknowledged that he’s working to bring Dredd back in one way or another (maybe Netflix?), and even Urban continues to campaign for its return.
The problem is, when these celebrities appear in public space, they say things on a whim without an explanation. This results in their words being twisted into whatever headline a writer wants. Take earlier this week as an example, when Urban told the Denver Comic Con crowd that a Dredd sequel was “…in development.“ People ran with the news, exclaiming that Dredd 2 was finally happening. (I give Jon Barkan huge props for avoiding click-bait and telling it exactly how it is.)
As badly as I want to see Urban return as Judge Dredd, I think it’s safe to say it’s going to be an uphill battle, although the idea of seeing it end up on Netflix feels very real. But not yet, not now, and not anytime soon, unfortunately.
First, Urban took to Twitter to clarify his remarks:
Dredd update : Unfortunately a sequel is no closer to happening , options have been discussed but there is no sequel in " development " .
— Karl Urban (@KarlUrban) June 22, 2016
Then, our buddies at Latino-Review reached out to Shankar, who shared this gut-wrenching response:
“Not true at all, bud … Unfortunately :(“
FUCK. I think we all knew in our heart of hearts it was too good to be true, but I strongly believe that it will happen, eventually. Let’s just give Urban and Shanker some space to get their plan together and “develop” a strategy for how they can bring the Judge back to the big screen or television or whatever…