Dredd Review

Producer, script and green light –  The producer of this film was Alex Garland, before doing this he was the writer of a novel called ‘The Beach’. After he wrote this the novel was made into a film and produced by Danny Boyle, a highly respected producer who was involved in the Olympic opening ceremony, the film also starred the high rated star Leonardo Di Caprio. This highlights his writing skills. Given Garland’s experience he was then given the role of writing the script of this film, aswell as producing. He clearly has a thing for gory films as he was also the executive producer of both 28 weeks later and 28 days later.

Distributors – The main distributor for the film was ‘entertainment film distributors’ a british distribution company founded in 1978 by Michael Green. As it is british it normally only ditrivuted british films, which this was classed as, it was classed as this as the producer and director were both English born. This distribution company has only ever produced 1 other blockbuster Piranha 3DD. Arguably this wasn’t even a blockbuster as the budget towards this film was incredibly minute. The other distributer was Lionsgate which is much more highly rated. Having distributed the Hunger Games and Dirty Dancing there was no reason why this film should have failed.

Director – The director of this film was Pete Travis, who’s is surprisingly normally familiar with TV. His most notable project before this was the television film Omagh, which won a BAFTA. As Dredd was only his second film which gained full theatrical release it may have been a step out of his comfort zone. He is now working on the highly anticipated Hangman, featuring James Franco.

Budget and box office gross – The budget for Dredd was quoted at $35,000,000 on IMDB but over $45,000,000 on the majority of other websites, such as Screenrant. The worldwide box office gross also varies on many websites, however not as much. On every website I looked on it was suggested to be around $40,000,000 or under.

Actors/Actresses –  For a blockbuster I would say that they aren’t as big as expected, Karl Urban who has featured in Star trek plays Dredd and Lena Headley who has starred in game of thrones and St Trinians plays ma-ma. Anderson played by Olivia isn’t that known. I would have expected bigger names as Sylvester Stallone played the first Dredd, released in 1995.

Marketing – In my opinion there was not enough word of the mouth promotion as the marketing wasn’t good, so not a lot of people went to see it. There was shown in early July at San Diego’s comic con international. A website called ‘Dredd report’ was opened featuring trailers and also a comic book was published which told the story of what happens before ma-ma takes over the slow-mo production.  An exclusive film poster featuring artwork by Jock was released by Mondo to promote the film's appearance at the 2012 Fantastic Fest in September 2012.

Critical reception - The film lived up to expectations in this department and scored fairly good reviews. It garnered a 78% approval rating from 147 critics, with an average rating of 6.5 out of 10, on the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes. At the premiere screening at San Diego’s comic con it received an 8/10 from the highly credible IGN. US newspaper critics were not as positive about the film as other reviewers, one of them branded it to be ‘a clunk-headed action picture’ and another saying that it was ‘all tough-guy talk and humourless cynicism.’ On the whole the critical reception was good as the negative reviews were strongly outnumbered by the positive.

Reasons for lack of success – There were quite a few reasons why Dredd didn’t succeed, in my opinion. One of these is that it was a remake of a very bad film so maybe not a lot  of people would have wanted to see it. Also as it received an ‘R’ rating it had a lack of mainstream appeal, as the audience is not vast like it could have been. This is why it was more of a hit on DVD as people under the age of 18 would have been able to watch it, it reached up to number 1 on the DVD charts. A lot of other ‘blockbusters’ were also released at the same time and they all took in over $50 million each aswell so there was clearly lots of competition.

Awards – Even though the film was dubbed a failure as it didn’t make a vast amount of profit at the box office, it did win some awards. At the Empire awards it was nominated for 3 awards, winning 1, which was the 3D, this is not surprising as the film was shot mostly in 3D. At the Golden trailer awards Dredd was nominated for 3 awards winning only 1. In my opinion if the marketing was better the film would have gained a lot more. Adding onto this it was competing against not just the big films that were released in the same few week but also all of the films from the same year, 2012.

Technology used - The film was shot digitally in 3D using RED MX, SI2K and Phantom Flex high-speed cameras. This shows how the producers and directors wanted to excel on special effects. There were also multiple camera rigs used. Even though plenty of it was filmed in 3D some still had to be converted to it in post production. They said that they wanted to create images that were 'beautiful but disorientating' 

Tie-ins – As said before, there was a comic book which was created as a tie-in, being a prequel for the actual film. Furthermore there was also a lot of toys created, obviously aimed at the main characters. Finally, a CD was officially released containing all of the songs which were used in the film.

Personal opinion - Although I wasn't the biggest fan of the film it had the potential to be an absolute phenomenon outstanding as that is what the film is supposed to have exceeded in. I liked how Dredd’s face wasn't shown as it made it realistic like the comics and not like the original Dredd film with Stallone.