He was offered the role a few weeks ago and now the ink is dry: Karl Urban will be front and center in the reboot of “Judge Dredd.”
Empire reports that he’s landed the gig and producers Andrew Macdonald and Allon Reich want to get it right, admitting that the 1995 version with Sylvester Stallone was frankly, a pile of shit. “The main thing about Dredd is that it’s a fantastic comic that was completely messed up 20 years ago,” said Macdonald. “Our idea is to make a very hard, R-rated, gritty, realistic movie of Dredd in Megacity, so we’ve got to get the tone right. He’s not going to take off his helmet. His bike is going to feel real. He’s going to hit people and it’s going to feel real.”
It’s actually kind of cool they’re going hard-R with this; we sorta figured the failure of “Watchmen” and the tepid box-office of “Kick-Ass” would’ve seen less comic movies going that route. But as we noted in a script review we received, Alex Garland’s screenplay is (not surprisingly) pretty dark and gritty with comparisons being drawn to “Die Hard” and “Blade Runner.”
Pete Travis (“Vantage Point”) is at the helm and the film will be shot in Johannesburg utilizing some of the behind the camera talent who made “District 9.” Comic creator John Wagner “is involved in every decision” and it looks like this will be film version “Judge Dredd” fans have been waiting for. While it would’ve been nice to see what Duncan Jones would have come up with, so far, this take on the material doesn’t sound so bad.
