The 40th anniversary of 2000 AD’s first comic should have been a happy occasion, but it ended up making us feel surprisingly blue.
The British comic publisher is responsible for giving us a number of brilliant characters, but none are as beloved as Judge Dredd, who first appeared in their second ever book back in 1977. Dredd’s popularity has always been high, but in 2012 the character got its second major movie adaptation with Karl Urban taking up the mantle of the titular character and introducing a whole new audience to the world of Mega City One. Unlike Sylvester Stalone’s 1995 Judge Dredd movie, Dredd was gritty and violent in all the right ways, and while it was a financial bust, it soon gathered a cult following.
Unfortunately for that cult following, a Dredd sequel has failed to become a reality. While Dredd’s box office performance was lackluster, it went on to do incredibly well on the DVD/BluRay/Digital market, which bolstered hopes that studios could be convinced of the property’s potential. Despite a great deal of petitioning from fans and Urban himself, we’re yet to get any positive signs that the big screen is ready to take another shot on the adventures of Mega City One’s finest. That all makes Urban’s most recent Facebook post all the more upsetting….
The Kiwi actor finally reappeared as Dredd last week, getting our hopes sky high, only to have them painfully dashed when we realized what the occasion actually was.
Just seeing Urban with the iconic Dredd helmet on reminds us how badly we want another one of these movies. But at the very, least it shows Dredd still has a piece of Urban’s heart, even if it’s not the announcement of a new movie that we all desperately want. Adi Shankar has hinted that an animated series might be more likely than a live action sequel, but 2000 AD execs have since distanced themselves from Shankar’s comments.
