Peter Travis’ upcoming film based on the comic Judge Dredd will be titled Dredd according to a press release from the international film company IM Global. The press release reads:
“DREDD takes us to the wild streets of Mega City One, the lone oasis of quasi-civilization on Cursed Earth. Judge Dredd (Karl Urban) is the most feared of elite Street Judges, with the power to enforce the law, sentence offenders and execute them on the spot - if necessary. The endlessly inventive mind of writer Alex Garland and the frenetic vision of director Peter Travis bring ‘DREDD’ to life as a futuristic neo-noir action film that returns the celebrated character to the dark, visceral incarnation from John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra's revered comic strip.”
This press release in and of itself doesn’t seem to give the upcoming film much of an actual plot, but Dredd producers Andrew Macdonald and Allon Reich have said that the vision is for a "hard R", gritty version of the Judge where the violence will "feel real." They said:
"The main thing about Dredd is that it’s a fantastic comic that was completely messed up 20 years ago. 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."
The screenplay, written by Alex Garland, has been seen by others and called it a cross between Blade Runner and Die Hard. Garland wrote the script for Mark Romanek’s Never Let Me Go. The positive feedback that the film has been getting from the Telluride Film Festival adds some weight to that writing hire. Travis directed the successful but not-as-well-received concept thriller Vantage Point.
The film, starring Karl Urban (Star Trek) and Olivia Thirlby (Juno) is set to shoot in Johannesburg using much of the same local crew that worked on Neil Blomkamp's District 9.
