Undoubtedly Sylvester Stallone gave a series of successful movies that forged his career making him one of the most prominent actors in Hollywood. But all films are not destined to be superhit, many movies in his career failed miserably including Judge Dredd. But for Stallone, it was a learning curve and he has zero regrets making the movie.
Stallone’s Judge Dredd suffered box office and critical bomb but the justification for it can be traced back to the production itself. As per reports, the movie was far from enduring the creative differences between the director Danny Cannon, and the producers while Stallone had nothing much to do with the decision.
Also read: Sylvester Stallone Made a Whopping $20M for a Disastrous Bomb He Called “Damaged Goods”
Sylvester Stallone Reflected on Making Judge Dredd
Judge Dredd can easily be placed among the forgettable sci-fi action movies or from the astounding list of movies in Sylvester Stallone’s glorious career in Hollywood. The movie was expected to gain huge accolades from fans and critics as the 1995 movie got a whopping production budget of $90 million. “Toward the end of making Judge Dredd,” Stallone said to Film Threat adding, “It really had nothing to do with me.”
“It had to do with gimmickry. And that’s fine. There’s certainly a place for that kind of picture. But in those kinds of films, when you see the star in the first few minutes do something that is so extraordinarily inhuman — not possible — you sit back and you look at it the way you’d look at a David Copperfield illusion. At the end of the movie, you don’t walk out saying, ‘I was moved’ or ‘I was sad’ or ‘I cried,’ but ‘How’d they do that?’ You intellectualize but you don’t emotionalize.”
Stallone further admitted that Judge Dredd was not the kind of action movie he’s used to be in, still, he is inherently an action star. “It would be wrong for me to say I would abandon the action genre,” the actor said. “But this genre is now two genres. I would call one ‘adventure’ and the other ‘über-action’ or ‘scientific action.’” Certainly, the movie was intended to make a mass-appealing thriller with action but it was far from the orbit of the box office earning only $113 million.
The Dredd Remake With Karl Urban
Dredd had the potential to shine as a comic book movie outside the big brands like Marvel Cinematic Universe and DC Universe yet the movies based on the 2000 AD comic strip Judge Dredd failed to make the expected mark at the box office in two attempts with different stars. While Stallone’s movie struggled to impress critics, Pete Travis’ 2012 Dredd starring The Boys actor Karl Urban was a remedy to the character. It was applauded by critics and fans alike, of course, the box office numbers were still an indicator of the movie’s bad business but it was not the question of the prowess of filmmaking.
“Dredd represented a failure in marketing. I saw the tracking of that film weeks before it came out and the fundamental problem was no one knew it was being released. Once it came out on DVD and it sold 750,000 copies in the first week alone in North America alone, it was very clear that the audience had discovered it,” Urban said of the movie’s failure at the box office (via, CinemaBlend)
Arguably, Urban’s Dredd suffered poor distribution and marketing strategies despite having a modest $45 million production budget to create the sci-fi cityscape. The $41.5 million box office was nowhere near recovering the production budget. The limited release of the reboot and Stallone’s Judge Dredd had an undeniable impact on the 2012 movie. Still, it was a remedy to the character— salvation and justice that Urban and Travis could provide to the loyal fans of the comic book character.
