Corona | Coming Attractions

The British comic book anti-hero Judge Dredd has already had one chance to be a movie star and the results were less than stellar. Back in 1995 Sylvester Stallone played the futuristic law enforcement officer of Mega City One, and while the film wasn't a critical, commercial or fanboy hit, in today's epoch where remakes are coming fast and furious, even Judge Dredd is getting a second chance to be a movie franchise.

Longtime Danny Boyle producing partner Andrew Macdonald has hooked up with screenwriter Alex Garland (The Beach, 28 Days Later) on this new Judge Dredd movie, which is said to go back to the elements of the original 2000 A.D. comic book and present him as more of a bad-ass than Stallone's version. Created by writer John Wagner and illustrated by Carlos Ezquerra, the Judge dispenses terminal justice to the law-breaking citizens of his town, instilling obedience through fear. A lot of the commentary on Mega City One's excessive society found its way into the sarcastic worldview of RoboCop, but since that film is also getting remade, no one is going to remember if the new Judge Dredd project feels (or even looks a bit) like RoboCop anyway.

Pete Travis (Vantage Point) is attached to direct this new Dredd film. Macdonald's just worked out a deal with Reliance Big Entertainment, the Indian film company with deep pockets, but the budget for the movie is rumored to be no more than $50 million. So far no star has been found to wear the big shiny boots of Dredd.