Karl Urban On A Potential Dredd Sequel

Make it happen, Hollywood!

By Rudie Obias | Updated

This article is more than 2 years old

dredd
While the Dredd sequel’s online petition is in full effect, the hopes for a sequel to one of the best science fiction/action films from last year is still very uncertain. Dredd was a big upgrade from Sylvester Stallone’s 1995 comic book adaptation, Judge Dredd, but that didn’t seem to bring general audiences to the theaters. Dredd was an embarrassing box office disappointment as it only grossed $35.6 million worldwide against a $50 million production budget. Although the science fiction film was box office poison, Dredd has since found an audience on home video, selling well over 650,000 copies of the film in one week. Those home video numbers are really impressive, but are they good enough to green light a sequel film?

In an interview for IGN.com, Karl Urban talked about how much he’d love to see a sequel film to Dredd. Over the past year, Urban was surprised how many people he came into contact with that knew him for his role as the helmeted police officer and not his role in the J.J. Abrams Star Trek reboot movies. For Karl Urban, there’s enough recognition for Dredd that a sequel might be a good thing for a new audience. Urban explained:

“You know people have discovered the movie after the fact, people have discovered this movie and gone, ‘Wait a minute, this is really, really cool.’ Unfortunately, a fundamental problem with Dredd was that at the time of its release people didn’t know about it. There was no awareness of it, and ultimately that hurt the performance of the movie at the cinema.”

Karl Urban offered up his thoughts on what he’d like to see in a sequel film. He’s aware fans want to see a movie about the Dark Judges and Judge Death, but he thinks it would be too expensive to make a film like that considering the circumstances with a lower production budget. Urban would like to see an origin of the Judges and how the world became the way it is in Dredd. Urban continued:

“Fans are screaming out for a Dark Judges movie. That would be a great one, but you know that’s a movie that’s going to take a budget. If you want to do that, you want to do it right. It’s much easier to go out into the desert and try and search for the origins of the Judges than to introduce Judge Death. Though again, that would be phenomenal.”

Honestly, another Dredd stand-alone movie would be fine with me. One of the best reasons why Dredd was so good was that it was a complete movie with a beginning, middle, and end. All the narratives were tied up and you can easily see Dredd go from adventure to adventure.

For the uninitiated, The Dark Judges were a group of four law keepers from a parallel dimension, which include Judge Death, Judge Fire, Judge Fear, and Judge Mortis. Led by Judge Death, they deemed that all crime were only committed by the living, thus all life was a crime. They were around killing people for any crimes committed. While it would be cool to see the Dark Judges in a movie, Karl Urban is right to think that it would be really expensive to bring them to the big screen.

If you like to watch a Dredd sequel, then go to the online petition and let your voice be heard.