Another nail in the Dredd 2 coffin comes from writer Alex Garland

Last Updated on July 22, 2021

Yep, another “Is DREDD 2 going to happen or not?!” story. Our last one came courtesy of producer Adi Shankar, who explained what needed to happen in order to get DREDD 2 done. Before that, in January, it was writer-producer Alex Garland telling us the project was in all likelihood dead. Today the bad news is brought home once again by Garland, who just doesn’t see a sequel in the cards. For him and his team, anyway.

Speaking with io9 while promoting the exceptional-looking EX MACHINA, Garland delivered the bad news in no uncertain terms, while once again leaving the door open for somebody else to take the helm.

There isn’t, as far as I can tell, going to be a Dredd sequel. The basic mechanics of film financing say that if you make a film that loses a ton of money, you’re not going to get a sequel. And that’s basically what happened.

And I understand and appreciate the support the film has had, and the campaigns that have existed for it, and it’s really genuinely gratifying — I love it in all respects except one, which is when I hear about people buying copies of the DVD in order to boost sales and to change the figures. And what I want to say to them is, “Don’t do that. Keep your money.” Because the people that are making the decisions are much colder and harder than that. And the graphs they’re looking at are not really going to be sufficiently dented by that.

So the support for the film is truly appreciated. But if there is going to be a sequel, it’s not going to be me and the team of people who worked on the previous film, it’s going to be another bunch of people. And good luck to them, and I hope it happens. I really do. I hope they do a better job than we did.

Plenty of people would argue that you did a very fine job, Alex, but we hear what you’re saying. Like it or not, the film was a box office flop (the sting hurts even worse when considering its very reasonable budget). I personally doubt a sequel will happen, but I sure wouldn’t be surprised if DREDD gets a remake/reboot not long from now.