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Dredd 2: Alex Garland drops some truth bombs - SciFiNow

Dredd 2: Alex Garland drops some truth bombs

Alex Garland talks Dredd’s box office failure and his thoughts on a possible Dredd 2

dreddThe Dredd 2 campaign has been rumbling on for a while now. We’ve seen pleas from Karl Urban and Oliva Thirlby to keep the faith, but writer Alex Garland has reminded us of some harsh truths while talking to SciFiNow about his new film Ex Machina.

“The stuff surrounding Dredd is all to do with realpolitik and the hard realities of filmmaking,” he explains. “And it’s very difficult making a case for Dredd in reality because the first film didn’t work, right? And then the second film didn’t work, but didn’t work in, I would say, in different ways than the first film didn’t work [laughs]. But it manifestly didn’t work as a theatrical release, particularly in America, or in fact anywhere outside of the UK. And that makes it a hard argument.”

Dredd certainly did flop hard in the States, despite rave reviews, but campaigners have pointed to its strong home entertainment performances as a potentially encouraging sign for a sequel. However, Garland isn’t convinced. “DVD sales are all very well but you are still talking to people about them handing over a lot of money for a film that’s happened twice and has not worked in their terms either time.”

Still, Garland believes that the character is too good to disappear entirely and says that he holds out hope for another film at some point down the line.

Dredd gif

 

“What I suspect about Dredd, which is obviously no more meaningful than what the next guy thinks about Dredd, is that the character has too many positives to be abandoned forever but it’s going to be someone else at some future point who restarts it, who has another crack,” he tells us. “So in other words what our relationship was with the previous film, someone else will have a relationship with our film, it will be a different group of people at a different point in time, that’s what I suspect will happen.”

You can buy Dredd on Blu-ray for £5 at Amazon.co.uk. Read our full interview with Alex Garland about Ex Machina and his career in the new issue of SciFiNow, on sale today.