Lionsgate has released a red band trailer for the upcoming Dredd reboot on the sidelines of Comic-Con 2012 in San Diego.
The long-awaited clip (for mature audiences) depicts future America as an dystopian and irradiated waste land. On its East Coast, running from Boston to Washington DC, lies Mega City One – a vast, violent metropolis where criminals rule the chaotic streets.
The only force of order lies with the urban cops called “Judges” who possess the combined powers of judge, jury and instant executioner. Known and feared throughout the city, Dredd (Karl Urban) is the ultimate Judge, challenged with ridding the city of its latest scourge – a dangerous drug epidemic that has users of “Slo-Mo” experiencing reality at a fraction of its normal speed.
During a routine day on the job, Dredd is assigned to train and evaluate Cassandra Anderson (Olivia Thirlby), a rookie with powerful psychic abilities thanks to a genetic mutation. A heinous crime calls them to a neighborhood where fellow Judges rarely dare to venture – a 200 story vertical slum controlled by prostitute turned drug lord Ma-Ma (Lena Headey) and her ruthless clan.
In other Dredd related news, veteran Hollywood screenwriter Alex Garland recently confirmed that he was considering turning the latest iteration of the comic franchise into an extended trilogy.
“We’ll see a sequel if the gross is above $50 million in the US. 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 feesl right for the first film. I thought it felt right but after about 16 drafts and it really didn’t work out,” Garland recently told Bleeding Cool.
“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.”
