It would be an understatement to say that cult comic book antihero Judge Dredd hasn’t had the best of luck in live-action. The 1995 Sylvester Stallone vehicle bombed at the box office after earning a little over $110 million globally against a $90 million budget, and neither fans or critics were particularly enthusiastic about the movie, which was ultimately labeled one of the worst of the year.
2012 reboot Dredd received a much more enthusiastic response, and is widely regarded as one of the most underrated action flicks in recent memory, but not enough people turned up to see it in the theater to make a sequel a worthwhile investment. Despite strong sales on home video, the movie couldn’t even recoup the $45 million production costs during its theatrical run and any talk of a follow-up has remained rooted in optimism rather than reality despite constant demands from fans.
Hoping that the third time might be the charm, a TV series was first announced in May 2017, but there hasn’t been a lot of news on Judge Dredd: Mega-City One since then. And while any chance of a big screen revival may be dead in the water, star Karl Urban has never given up hope of getting to play the character again in the future.
Now, in a recent interview, Jason Kingsley, CEO of current rights-holders Rebellion, has finally offered some long-awaited updates and not only did he confirm that the scripts for Mega-City One were completed and good to go, but he also admitted that they’d love to bring back both Urban and Stallone as part of their plans for expanding the universe.
“I want there to be a sequel. We’ve got the rights back so we can do it, we’ve just got to get rid of this virus thing that’s going on at the moment, and then hopefully things can kick off in all sorts of different areas of making film and TV, it’s just, it’s all very messed up at the moment for everybody. A lot of work has been done on all sorts of different scripts actually. So Mega-City One, the TV show. Basically, we can’t go into production because of the situation and we’ve got scripts, and everything is ready to go but the problem is, because of the situation everybody’s funding changes and everybody’s shifting around. Well if we can get people back, you know, we even joked that it would be quite fun to get Stallone back.”
While Karl Urban has never been shy in admitting that he’d jump at the chance of getting to play Judge Dredd again, Sylvester Stallone has never spoken too highly of his time under the mask, and you imagine he would take an awful lot of convincing to even consider it. That being said, it would be one hell of a hook for the show, even though it looks like it’ll be a while yet before Mega-City One comes close to being ready to shoot.