Corona | Coming Attractions

With an impress list of geek credits to his acting resume, Karl Urban could be in the process of adding another one to his C.V.: there's a promising rumor that the New Zealand pretty man will play the new Judge Dredd in the proposed $50 million dollar reboot of the film franchise.

After doing a bang on job playing Leonard "Bones" McCoy in last summer's Star Trek, and rising to North American audiences' attentions with roles in Xena: Warrior Princess, The Lord of the Rings, Doom and The Bourne Identity, Urban is building up his presence to take on the role of Mega City One's chief law enforcer.

This new attempt at turning 2000 A.D.'s best known character into a movie anti-hero also just received a positive script review at The Playlist, with the site's reporter comparing Alex GArland's screenplay to Die Hard set within the world of Blade Runner. The movie starts off with Dredd being introduced to his new partner, fellow Mega City One rookie cop Cassandra Anderson. The two are charged with apprehending a suspect inside a fortified skyscraper run by a suburban warlord. Once inside, the two cops have to find their suspect, stay alive from the roving gangs inside the building, and then take themselves and their charge all the way up the building's 200 floors.

"It’s a very action heavy script, with some amazing sequences that will make any Dredd fan happy," said the Playlist reviewer. This is a gritty film, that plays the world we are in as a realistic future, a very dark, unpleasant crime ridden world as Dredd explains ‘Tweleve serious crimes reported every minute. Seventeen thousand per day. We respond to around six percent’. The famous ‘I am the law’ makes a few appearances."

The producers of the new Judge Dredd were shopping it around to investors and interested foreign distributors two months ago at the Cannes Film Fest.