Whether a DREDD sequel will happen or not is still up in the air even though quite a few fans of the first film have been rather noisy about the topic. When it comes to star Karl Urban, he’s all for it. It’s nice to hear an actor so passionate about a project especially one that has such a solid fanbase rooted with the comics.
Urban wants to do right by the character when it comes to the next movie, if there is one. He shared his thoughts with IGN on what he’d like to see in the next installment:
IGN: You know, there have been rumblings about a Dredd sequel, and there’s certainly an interest on the part of the fans.
Karl Urban: A Dredd sequel, the fans are screaming out for a Dredd sequel and, I would like nothing more than to be a part of it. Dredd screenwriter/producer Alex Garland wants to do it, I want to do it. Really, I guess, it’s up to film financiers if they can crunch the numbers to make it work. If territories have made money in ancillary markets, because it’s been a huge hit on DVD. You know people have discovered the movie after the fact, people have discovered this movie and gone, ‘Wait a minute, this is really, really cool.’ Unfortunately, a fundamental problem with Dredd was that at the time of its release people didn’t know about it. There was no awareness of it, and ultimately that hurt the performance of the movie at the cinema. But then word of mouth got around and when it was released on DVD it sold 650 thousand copies in a week!
IGN: If there were to be a sequel, where would you like to see that character go?
Urban: Look there’s many places that I’d like to see that character go. You know, I personally would like to see almost an origin story. To see how that world got the way it got. In Almost Human, there’s still an optimism and a hope. We’re still striving to be the best of what humanity can be. In the world of Dredd, humanity has given up. There’s a dystopian vision of the future. I’d really like to see how it got that way, how the Judges came to be. To me that’s interesting. There’s a story, a great comic, it’s Origins, and that would be the great basis for a movie. Fans are screaming out for a Dark Judges movie. That would be a great one, but you know that’s a movie that’s going to take a budget. If you want to do that, you want to do it right. It’s much easier to go out into the desert and try and search for the origins of the Judges than to introduce Judge Death. Though again, that would be phenomenal. But you know, at the end of the day, we made Dredd as a stand-alone film and I couldn’t be more proud of it. I am thrilled by the fact that it’s found an audience that appreciates it. Every single day I get people asking me, ‘When’s there going to be a Dredd sequel?’ I went to buy a bottle of wine the other day and the guy behind the counter said, ‘Are you Judge Dredd? First of all, how did he recognize me? Secondly, just the fact that he’s a guy at the bottle store saying ‘I want to see more of that!’ That’s cool by me.
What are you guys looking for in the next movie? Do you think that Urban’s ideas are worth exploring?