Karl Urban Says DREDD Sequel May Become a DREDD Prequel

Well, beggars can’t be choosers, I guess?

Just in from the weird timing department, I recently rewatched Dredd, and was reminded of what a remarkably solid actioner it was.  It’s a well made movie with a good sense of pacing and structure (which, yes, it shamelessly stole from The Raid), but Karl Urban was pitch perfect as Judge Dredd, and it was refreshing to see a non-Marvel comic book movie eschew the boring tropes of their genre (e.g. origin stories and plenty of hero unmaskings) for something that was more true to the character.

This is why, despite the film’s anemic box office, I’ve been among those folks who gets very excited every time someone (usually Karl Urban, actually) mentions there may be a second film in the series.  Urban did that once again this weekend at Chicago Comic-Con, as he said:

“Why yes, there is a definite possibility. But, it is more likely that we will do the origins story with Dredd trekking through the cursed earth to find the first Chief Judge Fargo.”

And yes, I’m sort of excited again.  But honestly, not as excited as I have been in the past, mostly because the idea of telling a Judge Dredd origin story seems so far off the mark of what I dug about the last one.  I want to see Dredd and a full-fledged Psi Judge Anderson in action.  I want to see Judge Death!  I’m honestly not nearly as excited to see Chief Judge Fargo… except in that, since Dredd is a clone of this original Judge, it means we might see twice the Karl Urban on screen.

The cursed earth stuff could be fun, as the last film really downplayed the visually dynamic look of the mutants in the 2000 AD comic series, but at the end of the day the word “prequel” still bums me out, and I’m not sure if even a movie as cool as Dredd can get me over that.

If this ends up even being a thing, I guess we’ll see…

Source: Movie Web