HE IS THE LAWWWW GRRR! “Judge Dredd” Coming Back

“Iron Man 2” just made seventy zillion googleplex dollars this weekend (NOTE: Figure may not be accurate), so it’s safe to assume the comic book genre isn’t going away anytime soon.

In fact, you’re about to get a whole lot more superheroes coming your way: Thor, Captain America, The Avengers, Green Lantern, Butter Man, etc. (NOTE: Butter Man comic only exists in my head.) In fact, comic book heroes are so hot right now that one production company has even decided to bet on bringing back “Judge Dredd” to movie theaters. Yep, that “Judge Dredd.” The one that was turned into a Sly Stallone movie right during the peak of Sly’s “Wait, why does this guy paid lots of money to make horrible movies no one sees?” phase. With Rob Schneider and the goofy shiny future outfits and Armand Assante shouting GET DREDD! All that’s getting rebooted, and apparently it’s a HOT idea. Again, Hollywood is weird. From Mike Fleming at Deadline:

Andrew Macdonald’s DNA Films has made a deal with India-based Reliance Big Entertainment and IM Global to finance Judge Dredd, a 3D film that was scripted by Alex Garland, and will be directed by Pete Travis, best known for Vantage Point and Omagh…

Macdonald went back to the franchise’s DNA to completely overhaul the film and bring it back to its origins as the UK comic created by John Wagner and illustrated by Carlos Ezquerra. Dredd is set in a futuristic world filled with violence, and the character is empowered to act as judge, jury and executioner. Garland's best known for writing the novel The Beach, and scripting the Danny Boyle-directed scifi film Sunshine and 28 Days Later. He also wrote the script for a movie version of the Microsoft game Halo that was scrapped by Universal and Fox.

Garland’s bona fides are well-established, so maybe he can make this thing into something cool. Still, it’s gonna be awfully hard to wash the stink off of the last movie version of this character. That script must be insanely good to make people with money say, “Bring back Judge Dredd? OKAY! HERE’S $50 MILLION!” I just can’t see any other way something like this becomes, like, desired again. Though I do love it when any reboot is pitched like so: “No! We promise it won’t suck this time! Scout’s honor!” That’s fun. I suppose time will prove… THE FINAL JUDGE. Huh? Huh?

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