Okay, maybe that headline is a little harsh. After all, producer Adi Shankar has been talking about Dredd 2 long enough (as has everyone else involved in the first film) long enough now that you may have gotten the impression a sequel was in the cards. Fact is, when a movie makes $35.6 million on a $50 million budget, that’s far too much money for a film to lose if the hope is for any kind of a sequel and screenwriter and co-producer Alex Garland is here to assure you of that.
Speaking with io9, Garland said, “There isn’t, as far as I can tell, going to be a Dredd sequel. The basic mechanics of film financing say that if you make a film that loses a ton of money, you’re not going to get a sequel. And that’s basically what happened.”
But, but, but… what about all the extra Blu-rays and DVDs I bought?
“And I understand and appreciate the support the film has had, and the campaigns that have existed for it, and it’s really genuinely gratifying — I love it in all respects except one, which is when I hear about people buying copies of the DVD in order to boost sales and to change the figures. And what I want to say to them is, ‘Don’t do that. Keep your money.’ Because the people that are making the decisions are much colder and harder than that, and the graphs they’re looking at are not really going to be sufficiently dented by that.”
I don’t think this is the least bit surprising for most of you, even those of you that were holding out hope the stars would align and the folks with the money would somehow forget they were spending millions to make millions. Garland does, however, say there may be another Dredd movie in the future. But… “if there is going to be a sequel, it’s not going to be me and the team of people who worked on the previous film, it’s going to be another bunch of people. And good luck to them, and I hope it happens. I really do. I hope they do a better job than we did.”
While I still haven’t seen Dredd, I have to assume the fans would say they already did a great job on the first film, the problem seems to be with their ability getting people to actually see it, which I don’t think can be blamed on the filmmakers.
