DREDD 3D Behind the Scenes: Bringing Judge Dredd to Life

With DREDD 3D now in UK cinemas, downthetubes goes behind the scenes to discover the secrets behind the creation of the screen character of Judge Dredd for the well-received film...

New Zealand born, Karl Urban is a huge Judge Dredd fan and like Alex Garland has followed him since his youth.

Karl is most widely known for playing Eomer in the second and third instalments of Peter Jackson’s epic The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy in the 2009 J.J. Abrams’ smash-hit blockbuster, Star Trek. He played Russian assassin, Kirill in Paul Greengrass’ action thriller, The Bourne Supremacy alongside Matt Damon, and won acclaim for his performances in New Zealand films, The Price of Milk and Out of the Blue.

In 2010, Urban starred as William Cooper in Robert Scwhwentke’s DC Comics graphic novel adaptation, RED opposite Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Morgan Freeman and Dame Helen Mirren; followed by Preist 3D starring Paul Bettany and Christopher Plumber in 2011.

“We put together a pretty compelling package of mainly rights, producers, script, and a director with a solid track record and all our lead people were excited and on board,” says producer Andrew Macdonald of DREDD 3D as he recalls the casting of Karl Urban as Judge Dredd. “But we wanted to make a film that would be tough and grown up, the violence we required meant it would be R-rated in America and 18 in Europe, so we knew we could only spend about 40 million.

"It was not going to be big-budget, plus we knew we had a character that couldn’t take off his helmet, which we wanted and was in our contract with [Judge Dredd] the Kingsleys. So you can’t then have a huge movie star whose face you don’t see. We needed a great or good actor - as opposed to a marquee name like Will Smith.”

Allon Reich, who co-runs DNA Films with DREDD screen writer Alex Garland, weighs in with his take on casting the iconic character.

"Dredd is an extreme character," he continues, "the ultimate Judge and for him the law is everything. The rules are the rules and he administers justice with an extreme lack of prejudice. He is the best at what he does and the most feared. He brooks no argument and is tough as can be.

"He was inspired by Dirty Harry, is Britain’s longest lasting graphic novel character and remains one of the most loved; what’s more the term ‘Dredd-like’ is common currency even for people who have never even read the comic strip.”

The team needed an actor who would embrace that legacy and not feel hindered by the idea of playing a monolithic icon. Meanwhile, Star Trek and Lord of the Rings star Karl Urban heard that they were rebooting the comic strip for the big-screen and was curious.

“I was very interested because of my history of reading the comics, so I took a meeting with Alex, Andrew, Allon and Pete and listened to their take and it was clear that they wanted to make a radical departure to what had come before and wanted to make a film that was a lot more gritty, realistic and hardcore. A high-octane, action adventure which would be a lot more faithful to the source of the material and that immediately intrigued me.”

Reich says of Urban: “He comes from a kind of interesting place in terms of Star Trek and Lord of the Rings and he brought forward a trip he was making to LA to meet us and it was nice to see the passion. He grew up with the comic and had an attitude towards it and was very excited by the screenplay."

Greg Staples promotional art for
the DREDD 3D motion comic

The actor says his first introduction to Judge Dredd was through the comics.

“I started reading them when I was 16 when I was working in a pizza parlour in Wellington, New Zealand. I was pretty enamoured with the character as I was already a fan of sci-fi and enjoyed the world of Mega City One and I really loved the character of Dredd. He is this hardcore, futuristic lawman, the ultimate lawman in a society where the normal process of justice has changed. There are no more juries and lawyers and protracted legal system, it has all be condensed into one man.

"Since that age I’ve always loved a vigilante-type character and Judge Dredd is one of the best.”

A devout fan, the actor was doubly enthused by the fact that the filmmakers never, ever, wanted to see Dredd’s face, “One of the great aspects of Dredd is that you never fully see his identity. Since he was created in 1977 he was the faceless representation of the law and an enigma and to do anything else just wouldn’t have been Dredd.

“You can’t make the mistake of playing the icon, you have to play the man and he is a man who has an insanely tough job working in this society that is fragmenting and falling apart,” he continues. “His heroism is defined by an ordinary man.

"To me he is closer to those heroic firefighters who went into one of the Twin Towers on 9/11 and you couldn’t be further away from stereotypical superhero because he is not a Superman or Batman. He doesn’t have an alter ego, what you see is what you get and he calls the way he sees it. But the huge challenge for me as an actor was to try and inject as much dynamism as possible.

"It’s tough," he admits. "How do you convey a subtle emotion like doubt or concern when you don’t have the use of your eyes? So it has been a very challenging process.”

Urban says that he has always been attracted to darker roles, “When I approach a character I am interested in faults and flaws and what makes them human and three-dimensional. Dredd is an interesting kettle of fish in that his emotion is completely repressed, any normal social life that he may have enjoyed has been completely burned from his psyche, and in some ways I think he is tragic because he is charged with the job of protecting these people in society but at the same time he is incapable of functioning normally in that society.”

Apart from the psychological and emotional challenges of the role, playing Dredd was, of course, an intensely strenuous assignment. “This has been a very physical role. When I came into the movie and during pre-production I spent time in the gym getting into the right mindset and physical condition and then when I arrived for the shoot I was thrown into a boot camp for about two and a half weeks. That involved weapons training, technical movement, learning how to move under fire, learning to bust ‘perps’, breach doors and arrest people. One of the insane aspects of what I do is constantly learning skills you can never learn in real life!”

Urban was grateful that in making a more realistic version, the tone of DREDD meant they used real weapons and guns, “The lawgiver is a fully functioning weapon based on a 9mm system, so it actually fires and you can change to automatic to semi-auto. It is an added bonus as an actor when you don’t have to imagine it and it is actually there.

"Lawmaster is Dredd’s motorbike and it is based on a 500cc bike with a massive frame built over the top with machine guns, an extended wheel base, the chunkiest tires that they could find and it is a beast of a machine and that was real fun to ride.”

The actor says it was one of the things that he had a strong opinion about, “I thought it was important that the audience got to see me on that bike, riding the bike, weaving in and out of traffic.

"There is no blue-screen/ green-screen trick. When you see Dredd on the bike, you are there for the ride.”

Then there was the question of dialogue and how the Judge would actually speak, Urban had to decide what voice would have leapt out of that comic-strip. “To me in all the research I had done, Dredd’s voice was described like a saw cutting through bone,” he says, “So I felt I was trying to attain a resonance that wasn’t centred in my normal register. It was a lot more harsh and raspy in many ways which can be difficult to sustain and you can’t shout with a rasp, so it has its own set of issues.”

The actor did, however, insist on cutting down the dialogue and found a perfect collaborator in scripter Garland, “If it can be said in one sentence it would be better than three. I wanted it to be very minimalistic with Dredd just saying the bare minimum. And I can’t speak highly enough of Alex and how he helped; we were blessed to have him there. He has made an incredible contribution to this entire movie and for me it was a wonderful asset to have the writer on set. If I have questions about a scene or intentions of a beat I can just ask him and Alex is not precious about it. He is quite happy to improve on the material and is a wonderful collaborator and quite often you will go to him and he will say that is great, what about this and he will take it to you the next step and really elevate the material and improve upon it.”

Keeping consistent with Garland’s vision and staying true to the origins of the Dredd phenomenon was equally important to Urban and he felt truly privileged to meet its co-creator.

“I had the great fortune of meeting John Wagner and he was really lovely and complimentary. I felt somewhat nervous about it: Dredd is his creation and when you meet the creator you hope that you live up to the expectations and I imagine the expectations are pretty high,” the actor says. “I have to say he was really wonderful and was happy with what he saw. He recognised that we are being faithful to his creation and while we are not 100 percent transferring a complete world from comics into the medium of cinema, I think he could see and recognise that the heart of what we are doing is in the right place.”

• 2000AD Online: www.2000ADonline.com

• Karl will next be seen in the upcoming Star Trek sequel, scheduled for release in 2013

DREDD 3D Behind the Scenes - Getting the Story right

Karl Urban as Judge Dredd. Image copyright Reliance Entertainment

With DREDD 3D now in UK cinemas, downthetubes goes behind the scenes to discover the secrets behind the creation of the well-received film...

The future world of Judge Dredd created by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra back in 1977 for 2000AD has grown to have a life of its own. With countless stories and characters, it has been voted best British comic and Best Comic in the World Ever at the National Comics Awards.

Now, the endlessly inventive mind of writer Alex Garland brings DREDD to life as a futuristic neo-noir action film that returns the celebrated character to the dark, visceral incarnation from John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra's revered comic strip.

"I grew up reading Judge Dredd," says Garland. "The incredible writers and artists of 2000AD were formative influences on me. Andrew, Allon and I have developed this adaptation of the strip with an emphasis on adrenaline and realism, but with all the scale and spectacle of Mega City One.”

And Judge Dredd co-creator John Wagner and 2000AD are on board, “Alex Garland’s script is faithful to the original concept that made Judge Dredd a favourite bad-ass hero," he enthuses. "It’s a high-octane sleigh-ride through the dark underbelly of the vast future city. A fan pleaser.”

Getting the story right

John Wagner and artist Carlos Ezquerra's revered comic strip about a single-minded lawman in a distant future was born over three decades ago and has since spawned a legacy of its own. Novels, magazines, board and card games, computers and role-play games, action figures, duvet covers, pinball machines and even dressing gowns have been devoted to the iconic policeman, judge, jury and executioner who became a legend through a comic-book.

In its heyday in the late 1970s and then under Thatcherism, British comic 2000AD sold 100,000 copies a week, and the young Alex Garland was taken by its dark, visceral, ironic violence.

Karl Urban as Judge Dredd on his Lawmaster. Image copyright Reliance Entertainment

“I was around 10 when I found a copy of 2000AD at the local newsagent and started reading it,” the celebrated screenwriter and novelist says, “I got quite fixated about all of the stuff in there, but particularly Judge Dredd. That story you know of finding 2000AD in a shop and getting hooked on Dredd is really common amongst guys my age…and we’ve all carried something about that into our adult lives, I remember it was partly because Dredd has an adult aspect to it, like I was maybe slightly too young to be reading it. Like watching an 18 certificate film when you were 12, that particular thrill.”

The novelist and screenwriter, famed for his mix of psychological exploration, moral conundrum, and suspenseful plotting in his novels The Beach, The Tesseract and The Coma as well as his intense screenplays for 28 Days Later, Sunshine and Never Let Me Go, says he always thought he’d end up telling stories through comic strips.

“My dad’s a cartoonist, and I always thought I was going to end up doing cartoons. I used to draw comic strips constantly, so I picked up a lot of how to construct a narrative by that.”

He believes that this graphic-novel sensibility comes through in his books which are cinematic, “and comic strips are quite cinematic, the length of the chapters, and the speed with which the plot moves. So it is in my background in one kind of way, a graphic way of dealing with narrative.”

Co-creator of the comic book John Wagner understands Garland’s visceral reaction to his work and believes that the main attraction of Dredd is that he is a combination of good guy and bad guy.

“He’s a real bad-ass cop and in some respects you are all for what he’s doing and in others you think – ‘thank god someone like him doesn’t exist today’.”

That contradictory mix of good and evil is something that he believes is the real drawing force of the legendary character. "Although Dredd would never see himself as villainous, he believes he’s upright and righteous but he is certainly not someone you would want on the streets looking after you, because you’d probably end up inside.”

DREDD 3D Concept Art created by Framestore. Image copyright Reliance Entertainment
More imagery here on i09

Producer Andrew Macdonald first collaborated with Garland when he produced Danny Boyle’s film of The Beach ten years ago. In 2002 Garland wrote 28 Days Later for Boyle and Macdonald, who was now running the UK independent company DNA Films together with Allon Reich. Garland went on to write Danny Boyle’s acclaimed sci-fi thriller Sunshine and adapt Kazuo Ishiguro's masterful novel Never Let Me Go into a moving and provocative film for DNA Films.

The writer was inspired when the company decided to expand its horizons and venture into bigger budget waters with franchise-based, genre pictures aimed at a larger audience base with wider releases. Producers Allon Reich and Andrew Macdonald became aware that they might be able to get the rights to Judge Dredd and Garland would obviously be the perfect talent to pen the script.

Tracking down the rights, however, was intricate says Macdonald, “It was complicated because the film rights had moved through different owners. At one stage Disney owned them, then Stallone’s version. We spent two years getting the rights sorted.” But all along the team had faith that they’d get them and so Alex started working on the first drafts of a script.

The irony is that because the 1995 Stallone vehicle never delivered on the goods it enabled the filmmakers to get this reboot into gear. “It bizarrely enabled us to get the rights,” says Garland, “If the first film had been a smash hit, we would have never got the rights. It opened the door for us. And also we knew that people’s expectations would be defined by that film, so from the beginning we wanted a whole different thing. Something that was much more hard-core and edgy.”

Macdonald echoes Garland’s sentiments, “The rights were held by Rebellion [owners of 2000AD and Judge Dredd Megazine], run by two brothers, Jason and Chris Kingsley, who are also producers and they were very protective and knew the property had value and, like us, wanted to exploit it properly.

"It took a while to convince them that we were the right people but we had just done 28 Days Later and we said we wanted to do it like that. A movie that would not please everyone, which the first one tried to do and ended up diluting Dredd’s character. They changed the tone of the comic which was a big mistake.”

Even the star of that first Dredd film Sylvester Stallone agrees with their criticism, and has been quoted as saying it was a “real missed opportunity... for me it is more about wasting the great potential there was in that idea...it didn't live up to what it could have been.”

This time round the filmmakers wanted to remain true to Wagner and Ezquerra's vision and both Reich and Macdonald have always maintained the importance and integrity of the screenwriter and original content.

“We have always taken the view that any originator of material is important to keep on side and it’s vital to work with their wealth of knowledge and information about the material. On Never Let Me Go we worked very closely with Ishiguro and he was very involved at strategic moments,” says Macdonald. “When we wanted to do DREDD, it was essential to go and see if we could get the support of the person whose imagination it first came out of and that was John Wagner and we went to meet him. He has had other novels made into movies and was essentially a sceptic, even though he was perfectly polite!”

Wagner recalls getting an email from Garland requesting a meeting, “I thought ‘aha not another one!’ Then I met up with them and I thought to myself: ‘these guys are genuinely serious?!’

He says he was “desperate for a second Judge Dredd film to be made, because I wanted it to be made right and after our meeting I was impressed by their honesty and I really believed they were serious. I mean the fact that they cared enough to get me involved at such an early stage meant a lot to me.

"In 1995 they made the wrong film; they didn’t read Judge Dredd and just filmed another story. What they were embarking upon this time I knew was going to actually be the Judge Dredd I know.”

Garland was thrilled that they brought in Wagner at the first opportunity, “If at that first meeting John had said I just don’t want another film, the last one was too bruising and he doesn’t work on film and should stay as a comic book character and that’s where he should stay. I think we would have walked away and said fair enough. But I knew Dredd. I read him my whole life and I felt confident we would be able to do this.”

Producer Allon Reich reckons the meeting of minds in Garland and Wagner was fortuitous and led to a unique cinematic take on Dredd, “It is his creative vision. Alex is a big comic book fan, he grew up with Dredd and is immersed in the world of 2000AD and Mega City One and is also an experienced screenwriter.”

Garland used a lot of the original material, says Reich, but he also made it stand alone as a film in its own right. “It is absolutely his imagination and his creative vision and that is the stamp on this movie, without any question.”

Judge Dredd. Image © Reliance Entertainment

But writing it proved no easy task, “I started writing a story with another character in the Dredd universe, Judge Death, who is a nemesis character for Dredd and worked on that for a year through several drafts,” Garland says, “And in fact that was the first draft that John saw, but I realised I couldn’t crack it so I shifted on to pro-democracy terrorists which is another of the storylines that John created that I found particularly interesting.”

But the writer felt that wasn’t working either as an efficient narrative for the rebooting of Dredd onto the screen.

Judges Anderson and Dredd. Image © Reliance Entertainment

“Suddenly I thought, ‘I keep trying to go too big with this’ - that I needed to be thinking in a more reductive way and think of different kind of stories that John would tell. Which were not the big grand sweeping narratives of which there are many over the course of the Dredd mythology.”

Garland started to pare it all down and look at “some of the punchier stories which are like short stories.”

What he decided was to write a day in the life movie and Wagner couldn’t be more thrilled, “That was what was wrong with the first movie, it was too sweeping. They tried to show far too much. Alex has narrowed it down to a day in the life of Dredd and I think it is so much better for that.”

The long journey to the page proved fruitful and everyone responded to the script with delight, Pete Travis says, “I read Alex’s script and it blew me away. I think Alex created a story that goes beyond your needing to be a fan of the comic. If you live in a city, violence frightens you, and DREDD is set in a future that is not so far from ours. I think he has managed to fashion a character you can really grab hold of.”

Andrew Macdonald sums it up when he says, “What made DREDD possible was that we had a great character and we had a great script. Everyone who read it wanted to do it.”

- DREDD 3D Official website

- 2000AD Official website: www.2000adonline.com

London Kapow comic event snags Judge Dredd exclusive

Visitors to the upcoming Kapow! Comic Con next April (9th - 10th) will be amongst the first in the world to get an exclusive sneak peek at various upcoming comics, movie blockbusters and hit TV shows from some of the biggest publishers and studios in the world.

Andrew Macdonald, producer of international blockbuster hits such as Trainspotting, 28 Days Later and Last King of Scotland will be talking about the upcoming Dredd, based on Judge Dredd from the 2000AD comics.

“It's fantastic to be involved with Kapow!," says Andrew, "and I’m really looking forward to talking to all the fans about our upcoming Dredd movie.

"I’ll be on the 2000AD panel with a little taster of what people can look forward to from our 2012 release”.

The full film and TV guest list will be announced on the Kapow! website on 14th February 2011, but the comics creator guest list is already filling up, with appearances from the likes of John Romita Jr. (Kick-Ass), Dave Gibbons (Watchmen), Frank Quitely (Batman), Leinil Yu (Secret Invasion), Bryan Hitch (The Ultimates, The Authority) and more signing autographs, speaking on panels and giving exclusive previews of upcoming works.

Tickets are on sale now at http://www.kapowcomiccon.com/ and are selling fast, say organisers.