Taika Waititi To Bring Judge Dredd Back to the Screen
Thor: Love and Thunder filmmaker Taika Waititi is going to give Judge Dredd another shot, and the director will be making a third cinematic effort to get the character right.
When Sylvester Stallone made the big-budgeted Judge Dredd in 1995, the result was a box-office bellyflop that disappointed many times over. In 2012, Karl Urban stepped in the judicial avenger’s shoes and, yet again, that project, Dredd, faltered at the box-office. Leave it the Oscar-winner for writing Jojo Rabbit, Taika Waititi, to try to set the record straight and give the character of Judge Dredd some box-office justice. This newest project was recently announced with Waititi set to be in the director’s chair.
Drew Pearce (Fall Guy) will be adapting this iteration of British superhero Dredd to the screen and Pearce will steer Waititi in the right direction to help make the third time a charm for the character of Judge Dredd who has been getting “raw deal” cinematic box-office results in the past. That’s not to say that the previous efforts were both poorly received with audiences and critics. Urban’s version fared better with critics than Stallone’s by far.
There is no studio that has taken on the new project yet. Despite Waititi’s undeniable talent, some of his projects have underperformed at the box-office, namely Next Goal Wins, which was a considerable box-office failure despite its heartfelt attempt at tugging at viewers’ emotions. It only made $18 million worldwide with a paltry $6 million of that coming from ticket sales in the US and Canada. For a studio to tackle Judge Dredd, there should be a big-name actor in the role or, otherwise, a very good fit for the very distinct character which is Dredd.
Thor: Love and Thunder proved Taika Waititi can bring a very unique visual flair to the cinematic world. Maybe directing superhero movies is his greatest strength. Let’s hope so because a third disappointing box-office performance by the character, Dredd, could put a nail in the coffin for this highly regarded character in terms of future feature length productions revolving around Dredd.
Waititi may want to size up some potential casting choices as he shops around this new project. We need a larger-than-life Judge Dredd to make us forget about the Stallone washout from 30 years ago. Sadly, that film had bigger box-office returns than the much better Urban version did in 2012. Stallone used to be a big draw at the box-office, but with Judge Dredd, even he couldn’t save the poorly conceived (at the time) screenplay.
If nothing else, this new project proves Waititi is brave and takes big risks with each new project idea he takes on. We’re rooting for him to make this new Judge Dredd vision a huge success.
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