This isn’t so much of a surprise since studios these days try to make everything into a franchise, but it seems like Alex Garland, the writer of the upcoming ‘Judge Dredd’ reboot, has a pretty good idea where the ‘Dredd’ trilogy should go if the first film is successful.
According to Bleeding Cool, Garland spoke about the potential sequels to futuristic lawman’s new movie at the London Film and Comic Con during a Q&A session where a scene from the movie was also premiered. Here’s what the writer said it would take for a sequel to happen and what the sequels would entail:
“We’ll see a sequel if the gross is above $50 million in the U.S. It’s a simple financial equation. We’re an independent movie… In terms of Dark Judges, I wrote Death into this script, but it didn’t feel right for the first film. I thought it felt right but after about 16 drafts and it really didn’t work out.
I needed to have set up the city and Dredd first before taking on what is essentially a riff on the Judges. You need to know what the Judges are before you can subvert them. I wrote a second script, which was about Dredd going out to the Cursed Earth. That was rejected for similar reasons. If they want to make sequels, I’ve got a story that goes from this one into the origins of Dredd and the city. Then the third one has would have a strange, existential attack from the Dark Judges. “
I’m glad to hear that they didn’t try to stuff as much as they could into this first film. But since the Dark Judges are a popular part of the series, will it be enough incentive for fans to see this first movie that will reintroduce the world to Dredd and Anderson? We’ll find out in the fall when the movie gets released.
‘Dredd’, directed by Pete Travis, stars Karl Urban, Olivia Thirlby, and Lena Headey and opens on September 21, 2012.
