Dredd Studio Head Hints Sequels Could Happen

One of the studio executives who will make the decision regarding sequels to the upcoming Judge Dredd adaptation Dredd 3D said in an interview over the weekend that one or more sequels to the film are a real possibility. Writer Alex Garland has been walking around town talking about his big-picture ideas for the future of Judge Dredd onscreen quite a bit since the earliest screenings of Dredd 3D, the DNA Films/IM Global production that's being distributed by Lionsgate in about two weeks. There had been reports (from Garland) that a trilogy was being considered. He told fans that if the film made $50 million at the U.S. domestic box office, a sequel would likely get made. He leaked a number of details about what might appear in sequels, including but not limited to the Dark Judges in the third installment. But all along the way, director Pete Travis and the studios had seemed suspiciously quiet on the matter, and in recent weeks Garland had seemed to run out of steam a bit, suggesting that if there were a sequel he might not be involved with it...and that if he were to guess, he would peg Dredd's best chance at a meaningful franchise on TV. Enter DNA Films's Andrew McDonald, who doesn't sound quite as enthusiastic as Garland was in those early interviews, but nowhere near as conservative as Garland has been in recent days, either: "Alex (Garland) has a very good idea for Dredd's journey," Macdonald told Screen Daily. "I certainly think it would be an exciting thing to be done. We've nailed a style and we have found in Karl Urban an absolutely magic Judge Dredd. It will be something that we will do again in partnership with IM Global. I am sure that, if it works, it's something that all the distributors will want to do again." The exec also noted that it's more likely than not that future films would be shot--as was Dredd 3D--in South Africa, and that the second film is slated to see Dredd venture out into the Scorched Earth, the uninhabitable wasteland surrounding Mega City One. Fans who read that sentence, though, and have flashbacks to the 1995 Sylvester Stallone nightmare: it's unlikely to be too similar, in no small part because it's been said Olivia Thirlby's Judge Anderson would appear in sequels, which would seem to preclude a repeat of the whole "stripped of his badge and gun" silliness. "I just want to say if this film is a one-off cult classic, then I'm cool with that because I'm really proud of the film," star Karl Urban said in a recent interview. "And we showed it the other night and the audience loved it. And to me that's like, I'm happy. I'm good. If we don't end making more of these, than I'm cool with that because it's all good on my end. If we're fortunate enough if it blows up at the box office, then absolutely I would definitely love to come back and reprise the role and make more of these. I just think there's so much fertile ground to explore within the character and within the world. And I would love to see the continuing story and the evolution of these characters and the relationship between Anderson and Dredd. And it would be interesting to find out more about the world, more about Dredd. It would be really cool to see the Dark Judges. There's so much. And it would be great to — we've seen one aspect, one sector of Mega-City One. It would be great to see other aspects."