“Judge Dredd” has returned.
The popular British comic book character, who has been adapted twice for the big screen before (in 1995 with Sylvester Stallone essaying the character and again in 2012 with Karl Urban in the title role), is headed back to the theaters.
Drew Pearce, the writer of “The Fall Guy” and Michael B. Jordan’s upcoming “The Thomas Crown Affair,” is teaming with director Taika Waititi for a new iteration of the character, TheWrap has learned.
No details of the new take on the character have been revealed at this time.
Pearce and Waititi are fully on board for the new iteration of the character. The two are old friends, having both served time in the trenches at Marvel Studios – Pearce co-wrote “Iron Man 3,” directed a short for the company and wrote a script for a “Runaways” project, while Waititi directed “Thor: Ragnarok” and “Thor: Love and Thunder” and has appeared as the character Korg in multiple projects.
Producers include rights holders Chris Kingsley, Jason Kingsley and Ben Smith of Rebellion Developments (who hold the rights to the character), Roy Lee of Vertigo Entertainment, Jeremy Platt, Natalie Viscuso and Pearce.
The character was created by writer John Wagner and artist Carlos Ezquerra. Judge Dredd lives in a post-apocalyptic future where “Mega-Cities” are the only remaining bastions of humanity and judges serve as judge, jury and executioner to uphold the law. His first appearance was in the second issue of “2000 A.D,” the influential British anthology comic.
1995’s big screen version, produced by an arm of the Walt Disney Company, was heavily criticized for taking away the original comic’s edge and sanding down the character. (For instance, the comics version of Judge Dredd never takes off his helmet, which Stallone frequently did.) Multiple cuts were made to soften the movie for a PG-13, it still got an R but was softer than it probably should have been. The 2012 was a lower-budget affair but more clearly indebted to the comics; it had a pseudo-“Die Hard” structure with Dredd and a young Judge (Olivia Thirlby) stuck in an apartment complex. The script was written by Alex Garland, who also partially directed the movie (officially credited to Pete Travis).
