Judge Dredd IP owner Jason Kingsley, who is the CEO of Rebellion, denied a recent rumor that a Dredd series with Karl Urban was in development at Amazon with the producers of The Boys.
The rumor came from the Tachyon Pulse Podcast YouTube channel with the channel’s host stating, “Karl Urban, his name has gone through the roof over at Amazon. They like him very much. They really do put down his character in The Boys as one of the main reasons why that show succeeded.”
“And I’m hearing that conversations have already started about reigniting some sort of Judge Dredd project starring Karl Urban. That again, it will be a very true to the comic books, but it will go a lot further than they were able to do with the Dredd movie limited by budget basically,” he added.
Still later he indicated that the show might be done by the production team of The Boys, “I’m hearing, actually, that the production team around The Boys are the ones that will potentially be doing it.”
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Kingsley responded to the rumor on Facebook stating, “I've just been surprised by the latest rumour about a Judge Dredd series by Amazon and the producers of the Boys and starring the excellent Karl Urban. That would be great potentially, but I'm pretty sure we'd have had to negotiate a contract and been part of the creative process.”
“To summarise, it isn't true,” he concluded.
While Kingsley denies the rumors, he has previously indicated he had been shopping Dredd to various partners. Speaking to Sports Illustrated in 2023 he shared why it was taking so long to make a sequel to the 2012 Dredd film, “I have been working for years on trying to find the right business partner for that.”
“We’ve had conversations with all the big players,” he continued. “Conversations are still ongoing. But the terms that we’re being asked for, we can’t support. They’re not how we want to work.”
“So we’re getting there. We’re making progress. But it’s slow, slow, slow. So yes, I want to get some more of it done. Obviously, I want to do cool stuff. There’s nothing to announce yet,” he concluded.
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Later in his interview he shed more light, “One of the things I think sometimes the general public doesn’t understand is how much work goes on behind the scenes, how many false starts, and how many hours you spend negotiating with somebody only to reach a point where you actually can’t conclude a deal.”
“You can’t agree because it just wouldn’t work for the legacy that is the archive of material we’ve got. We’re not going to sell Judge Dredd to people basically, and people want to buy it. That’s what it comes down to. I’m afraid that won’t work for us. No, we’re the guardians of this IP,” he explained.
A Judge Dredd: Mega-City One TV series was in development back in 2018 with Variety reporting Rebellion had purchased a new warehouse and was planning to convert it into studio space for the series at the time.
In fact, Urban was in discussion to reprise his role as Judge Dredd in the series, During the Star Trek Las Vegas Convention in 2017 he shared, “I am in discussion with them about that. I told them if they write the material and give Dredd something to do and give him a function, I will be there. I would love to.”
Series producer Brian Jenkins also expressed his desire for Urban to return to the character, “We have had many conversations prior to this, about all sorts of things. He’s also very busy, a full-time professional actor. So we’re going to have some long and complicated conversations I would imagine, and we’ll see where we go. It’s too early to tell yet, but if we can use him and he’s available to us, then I think that would be absolutely brilliant. There’s always a possibility he will be busy, or that his schedule for other movies won’t allow- Basically, we don’t know at this stage.”
The series was eventually put on hold in 2020 due to the pandemic. Kingsley informed the Radio Times, “I want there to be a sequel [to 2012 movie Dredd]. We’ve got the rights back so we can do it, we’ve just got to get rid of this virus thing that’s going on at the moment, and then hopefully things can kick off in all sorts of different areas of making film and TV, it’s just– it’s all very messed up at the moment for everybody.”
“A lot of work as been done on all sorts of different scripts actually, so Mega-City One the TV show,” he added. “Basically we can’t go into production because of the [coronavirus pandemic] and we’ve got scripts and everything is ready to go but the problem is, because of the pandemic and everybody’s funding changes and everybody’s shifting around.”
What do you make of Kingsley’s denial of this rumor?
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