He’s known as judge, jury, and executioner on the streets of Mega-City One, but to film fans, Karl Urban’s Dredd is nothing short of a square-jawed legend.
Six years ago, Urban and director Pete Travis delivered a brutal and hardcore rendition of the leather-clad lawman that ultimately bombed at the box office. And that’s despite overly strong reviews from, well, everyone. It’s a testimony to Travis’ direction, then, that Dredd has withstood the test of time to become a modern-day cult classic, and one need only poke their head into the WGTC archives to realize that Karl Urban has been fielding questions about the wider world of Mega-City One ever since he hung up the helmet.
But with a spinoff TV series now in the works, one that’s aptly been titled Judge Dredd: Mega-City One, Urban’s performance has been thrust into the spotlight once again. Could it lead to a bona fide cameo in the upcoming project? That’s a question JoBlo posed to the man himself, to which he replied:
There’s so much interest in that particular character and I would dearly love to have the opportunity to get in there and play that again. There are so many wonderful stories in the 2000 A.D./Judge Dredd canon that we’d be remiss not to have the opportunity to tell them. If it were up to me personally we would have been making Dredd 2 two years ago.
Sadly, a direct sequel to Dredd never came to pass, but there’s still hope for Karl Urban’s Judge yet, as the actor went on to tease the possibility of a recurring role on the forthcoming TV show:
The rights holders [Producer Brian Jenkins and Rebellion CEO Jason Kingsley] are in their process of developing their show called Mega-City One and we’ve had many discussions and the ball’s in their court. Hopefully, they get it together and are able to deliver more of what the audience wants and it would certainly be a privilege and a pleasure to be a part of it.
Judge Dredd: Mega-City One is still simmering in the bowels of development over at IM Global and Rebellion ahead of a tentative premiere date in 2019. More on this project (and Karl Urban’s potential involvement) as it begins to coalesce.