Judge Dredd loses the Judge to become ‘Dredd’

Before JUDGE DREDD was a horrible Sylvester Stallone movie, it was a rather awesome comic with the potential for greatness. The remake of the film is trying to realize that, and in an attempt to further distance themselves from the original film, they’ve now retitled their version DREDD, which if I didn’t know any better, might sound like the tale of a pirate ship with a crew who didn’t know how to spell.

The film stars Karl Urban and now Olivia Thirlby, and with this title change comes an official synopsis, the first we’ve seen from the project.

DREDD takes us to the wild streets of Mega City One, the lone oasis of quasi-civilization on Cursed Earth. Judge Dredd (Karl Urban) is the most feared of elite Street Judges, with the power to enforce the law, sentence offenders and execute them on the spot – if necessary. The endlessly inventive mind of writer Alex Garland and the frenetic vision of director Peter Travis bring 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.

Note again the reference to the original comic. This synopsis is pretty damn light on any plot details, but serves to reinforce that this version is going dark rather than campy, a vision we can hopefully all appreciate. I’ll be skeptical until I see a trailer though.