Urban Confirmed as Dredd
2 min readA rumor from last month that Karl Urban would play the lead role in Judge Dredd has turned out to be confirmed.
Judge Dredd producers Andrew Macdonald and Allon Reich confirmed that Urban had been cast for the role in the film, which will begin shooting soon in South Africa.
Macdonald spoke about making the movie based on the Judge Dredd comic and what he and Reich had in mind for the story based on a comic that appeared thirty years ago. “The main thing about Dredd is that it’s a fantastic comic that was completely messed up twenty years ago,” he said. “Our idea is to make a very hard, R-rated, gritty, realistic movie of Dredd in Megacity, so we’ve got to get the tone right. He’s not going to take off his helmet. His bike is going to feel real. He’s going to hit people and it’s going to feel real.”
According to Macdonald, movies based on comic books have changed. “They were treated unseriously and now they’re treated seriously,” said Macdonald. “We’ve cast a guy called Karl Urban to play Dredd. We’ll be shooting in Johannesburg; it’s being directed by Pete Travis; we’re shooting with the people who did District 9, and if we get it right, Alex has a couple of ideas for other stories as well. It’s not based on any one comic, and John Wagner is involved in every decision.”
Judge Dredd is expected out in 2012.