ANOTHER DREDD PHOTO

[Steve Green]

I'm with TB Block. Let us not forget that 2000ad's (well, okay, Pat Mill's at least) original ethos was to ride the wave of everything that currently popular, just with a bit of a twist.

Cultural ping-pong is what culture is all about [/over-simplification]

The difference being, I don't think Robocop is enough of a twist compared to pop-culture inspired 2000AD stories, if you take it that he is raised from birth/activation with just the law/directives, with his emotions buried, it's far closer to Dredd than Dredd is to Dirty Harry, or Skizz to ET.

[TordelBack]

...or Skizz to ET.

Ah Steve, you're pushing it here!     I know Alan says he'd never seen the film when Tharg explicitly asked him to (in this case) rip ET off, but it's a lot closer than Robocop is to Dredd, particularly in the character of the main man.  It's basically 'what if ET landed in Birmingham', but swap bikes for mopeds, and make it good - and it's still not a rip-off in my book.   

[Steve Green]

I'd disagree - you obviously get more inside Skizz's head than you do ET's. ET is more of a blank slate.

The film itself has parallels to the strip, him falling ill, the final rescue, but the feel of Dredd and Robocop as characters feel closer.

[A.Cow]

The problem I have with the term 'rip-off' is that it's pejorative [...] in my mind a 'rip-off' is where you have been deliberately misled as to what you're getting.

You would have to go and talk sense, with logic and all that, and show our foolish comments to be the nonsense that they are.  Bastard!

[IAMTHESYSTEM]

Tell it like you see it [ or indeed read it] A.Cow.

Photo- it's DREDD like enough for me. You could almost imagine someone like Arthur Ranson or Cliff Robertson rendering that and the SFX people bringing it too life. Maybe one day in the future that will be possible.

[JOE SOAP]

Rip-off or not, RoboCop certainly scuppered any Dredd film, henceforth, being original 'Dredd'.

[TordelBack]

Rip-off or not, RoboCop certainly scuppered any Dredd film, henceforth, being original 'Dredd'.

Ah, now there's a point I can agree with.

[radiator]

Not sure I buy that line from the makers of the 1995 Dredd "oh, we couldn't make it good because Robocop was too similar".

Yeah right, because Hollywood producers are so concerned with originality...

[JOE SOAP]

Not sure I buy that line from the makers of the 1995 Dredd "oh, we couldn't make it good because Robocop was too similar".

Yeah right, because Hollywood producers are so concerned with originality...

No, but in this case RoboCop did use-up many of the tonal/concept ideas in Dredd and considering RoboCop -an R-rated film not marketed to PG13- is a product of 80's 'Hollywood' and began as a proposed Dredd film,  would it really have been that unlikely that a real, original 80's Dredd film with the right producers wouldn't have happened?

The writers of RoboCop who had previously worked with '95 Dredd producer Ed Pressman at Cinergi -the company that would later produce '95 Dredd- to develop their Dredd film, admitted to Pressman that Robocop was their Judge Dredd film. RoboCop stole Dredd's thunder and put the production of the film back about 5 years. To say that it didn't force in some way the later producers/writers to go in a different direction, especially with a bigger budget and with Stallone, would be ignorant of the relationship history  those involved in both films had.

[Beaky Smoochies]

Wasn't another problem for Pressman, Lippincott (for it he he who held the movie rights to JD), etc, the fact they couldn't get a script they all liked?  When they approached John Wagner and Alan Grant in the early 1990's to pen a treatment, there was something like fourteen different scripts - at various stages of development - by sixteen different writers, including the Tim Hunter/James Crumley one featuring Judge Death, which if anyone has a copy of, I'd love to read it!

Hunter left the project around 1991/2 (he also left RoboCop 2  before that, interestingly), and Lippincott and Pressman (once they had successfully both alienated and dissed Wagner and Grant, to their shame) hired Peter Briggs to write a potential Judge Death treatment, and also hired William Wisher to pen a Rico treatment, with the intention of turning both over to Arnold Schwarzenegger to see which one he liked, but Briggs left because he felt they were interfering in the writing process too much, and Ahnold left because he didn't want to be under a helmet for much of the film, leaving Wisher and the Rico treatment which he handed in around February 1993, and later that year, Danny Cannon (whose debut film, The Young Americans , Cinergi's CEO Andy Vajna saw and liked) pitched the JD film as a futuristic Roman epic, which they loved, he subsequently signed on, and the rest, as they say, well you know...

From my own personal viewpoint, the only reason a 'proper' Judge Dredd movie wasn't made was because Lippincott hated the idea of Judge Death (he subsequently admitted it himself to Briggs) and steadfastly resisted it all along, the Hunter/Crumley script could have easily been revised and streamlined to make it more filmable and accessible to a wide audience, there were potential investors interested in funding the project (I believe $20million in early 1990's USD value was the budget they were aiming for), but it never got that far.  If they had pushed for it, it could have been made for the aforementioned amount, and because it would've been a relatively modest budget, it would have had a strong chance of being both a critical and commercial success, and THAT'S the real motivation among most producers and financiers when greenlighting a project, the whole "we couldn't do a proper Judge Dredd movie because of RoboCop " I don't buy, if RoboCop  began as a potential JD adaptation, why didn't Lippincott and Pressman go with that in the first place...?

[Tiplodocus]

the whole "we couldn't do a proper Judge Dredd movie because of RoboCop " I don't buy,

As well as not giving a fudge about originality, HOLLYWOOD also doesn't give two hhots about timing.  There are countless instances of IDENTICAL movies being released within months of each other. (e.g. Armageddon/Deep Impact or Kevin Costner Robin Hood/Patrick bergen Robin Hood, christ you've even had TWO James Bond films out in one summer)

So, no matter what they say, I also just don't buy that anyone would see ROBOCOP and go "Bugger, no Dredd for us then".

Unless, hey, these guys showed some integrity!

[Buddy]

I had no idea Peter Briggs wrote a Dredd screenplay... I met him a few years ago and had I known that then I'd have been all over him for info.

Nice bloke.

[JOE SOAP]

As well as not giving a fudge about originality, HOLLYWOOD also doesn't give two hhots about timing.  There are countless instances of IDENTICAL movies being released within months of each other. (e.g. Armageddon/Deep Impact or Kevin Costner Robin Hood/Patrick bergen Robin Hood, christ you've even had TWO James Bond films out in one summer)

If that were the case why didn't they rush a Dredd film into production after RoboCop, why did they wait nearly 10 years, 2 years after RoboCop's last sequel? I don't remember any big-budget RoboCop clones at the time. There may have been a few b-movie attempts but it's just a difficult thing to pull-off well especially in the ultra-conservative 80's. Dredd would have cost 3 times what RoboCop cost.

(e.g. Armageddon/Deep Impact or Kevin Costner Robin Hood/Patrick bergen Robin Hood, christ you've even had TWO James Bond films out in one summer)

There's a big difference, those films are an easy sell and are 'archetypes' that have box-office track records. Heroic disaster films are always a draw and how many times has Robin Hood/Bond been remade again and again? Dredd was never a sure thing becuase of the sheer expense in such a taciturn character with no easy origin story 'arc'. The struggle over a script they wrongly wanted to appeal to a broad audience hardly justified their investment and in the end it failed because the large money risk ended up homogenising the idea.

I had no idea Peter Briggs wrote a Dredd screenplay... I met him a few years ago and had I known that then I'd have been all over him for info.

He co-wrote it with his 'author' brother Andy. The Judge Death script -rejected for the first film- was to be used as a sequel if the first one was successful. The script still exists.


The James Crumley & Tim Hunter script is a catch-all mess referencing nearly everything in the Dredd universe and more: Bob Booth, Fatties; the Dark Judges, Angel Gang, Fargo, Anderson and Giant are main characters plus mutants and mutant bacteria plots. It's written for people with ADHD and would've been the most expensive film ever.

[dweezil2]

Could anyone on the board who has the James Crumley/Tim Hunter and the Peter/Andy Briggs scripts in PDF email them to me please, if it's no bother?

Would love to give them the once over.

Someone here a few years back was kind enough to send me the Crumley/Hunter one, but it was lost when I failed to back it up during a change of computer!

Doh!!!!

[JOE SOAP]

If anyone wants this PM me your email address.