Wow, released on Sep. 21, I can’t find a single theater playing it anywhere in the entire SF Bay Area now. Oh well…
There was a decent amount of TV promos, making it get some visibility, but I don’t recall when it actually hit the theaters. Fact is, I was looking through the theater listings and it was already at the Dollar movie. Wait, has that even been in the main run theaters?
My opinions of why it didn’t do well;
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Judge Dredd isn’t well known. It’s an indy niche for comic books, so has little mass market visibility. That’s not a complete death knell for comic books, but that means the marketing has to get the general interest audience’s attention based on the concept they don’t really know what it is.
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If the mass market audience has any reference, it is the Stallone movie. Not really a selling point.
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The ads were a collage of scenes set to emphasize “action movie”. There was no coherence to suggest a story. There’s a meme running around that action pics don’t need a story or a coherent plot, just lots of explosions and violence. I disagree. There has to be some shape to the series of explosions and voilence.
Stallone doesn’t use near that many R’s. (Stallone is rhotic.)
The only Dredd news I ever heard was one other CS thread and now this one. I literally just didn’t see anything for it anywhere.
That being said, over-the-top violent action flicks are not really my cup of tea. I will only go to them when dragged by someone else.
Poor marketing may have been the cause. But it’s also a really bad movie. It did a lot of things wrong that are crucial to good storytelling.
If it was going to be that type of movie that just drops you in to a scenario and let’s you work out the world as you go, well they fucked up by giving an establishing narration and then going back to the just drop you in the scenario formula. Cop on motorcycle chasing three drug-smoking villains in a van. I never guessed what would happen next.
I didn’t care whether any of the judges lived or died, because we don’t have a single insight into what makes them tick. What drives them to fight for justice against impossible odds. They just like blowing shit up? I don’t know. It seems so. Sensitive psychic? Gruff enforcer? Next time, please make me care about either of them.
The closest character to him was Kay
Lots of people apparently didn’t get a lot of marketing for it (though I saw plenty of ads). However, the ads weren’t very good. Also, it probably came out a little late for the summer movie season.
However, I think the main reason it flopped was that they banked too much on the “3D”. The official name of the movie was Dredd 3D. That’s just a terrible idea no matter how you shake it.
Yeah, I mean it is telling you to be afraid of 3D, right in the title. 
I don’t have a TV and I use ADBLOCK, so I have no idea about the trailers, I found out about the film from an ad on a bus.
Yep, having 3D in the title makes it seem like the film is relying on it as a gimmick, when in fact all the 3D did was make the film even more immersive.
Yeah, the association of Dredd 3D with Piranha 3D may not have been fully thought out.
Unless they wanted their movie to seem like a low budget exploitation horror movie.
Judge Reinhold
Judge Judy
Mike Judge
in
Judge Dread!
I liked it much better than the first one they made. It wasn’t a great movie, but it was fun.
From the ads, it looked like a Hollywood remake of The Raid: Redemption. For those who have seen both, is that pretty much the case?
Given that it is based on a well-established British character, had a British writer and director, starred a New Zealand actor, and was filmed in South Africa, why do you assume it’s a Hollywood anything?.
Hollywood-esque, then.
The larger point is that it looked like a rip-off of The Raid. So, is that perception accurate?
Since it was filmed first (as has been mentioned in this thread), I kind of doubt it.
Scanned the first page of the thread, but didn’t catch the reference to The Raid. Sorry.
Of course, being filmed first doesn’t necessarily disprove the rip-off idea, if the script for The Raid had been floating around for a while. I don’t know if that’s the case or not. Seems odd that two films would come out so close in time with such a similar idea. But hey, maybe The Raid was a rip-off of the Dredd script. Who knows?
Anyway, from a casual moviegoer’s perspective, Dredd looked like a quick knock-off of the previously-released The Raid. Casual moviegoers are not going to investigate filming schedules. They are just going to say to themselves, “Didn’t I just see this movie?”
That was my reaction.
But how many casual moviegoers have actually seen the Raid?
From IMDB:
The Raid: Gross:$4,105,123 (USA) (8 July 2012)
Dredd 3D: Gross:$13,325,968 (USA) (21 October 2012)
Dredd’s poor performance can’t be because millions of moviegoers didn’t go because they thought it was a ripoff of a movie they hadn’t seen.
Also the Raid was made after Dredd but it was released first. Due to Long post production.
Just think: if this was Dredd 2D this could all have been avoided.
I guess this means there won’t be a Rogue Trooper movie.